


A Slash of Blue

by todisturbtheuniverse



Series: Tongues Will Wag [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, Crush at First Sight, F/F, Fluff, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Purple!Hawke Humor, Resolved Sexual Tension, Romance, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-13
Updated: 2013-10-30
Packaged: 2017-12-26 10:39:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 50
Words: 21,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/964977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/todisturbtheuniverse/pseuds/todisturbtheuniverse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hawke has a small case of hero worship for Isabela: a series of ficlets spanning all three acts. </p><p>(It might be a crush. Or a powerful dollop of lust. Nothing more than that, surely.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Bad Joke

**Author's Note:**

> This fic now has a counterpart, which is told from Isabela's POV: [A Slash of Red](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2280987/chapters/5013147). They can be read in either order; whichever you read second will simply add to the story.

The moment you lay eyes on her, you’re lost.

Varric wouldn’t approve of that opening. It’s weak, trite, overdone. You would try again—and again, just to make him cringe—but you’re too distracted by the long lovely curve of a thigh leading into a boot; a slash of blue slung jauntily over a hip; a bicep tensed, fingers clenched around a dagger that makes your mouth go dry.

Two refugees, an abomination, and a dwarf walk into a bar.

You’re not a storyteller, but you want to whisper words over every inch of her bared skin.

Bethany shifts irritably beside you like she  _knows_ ; while your eyes are fixed on a tightly-laced jerkin, hers are rolling skyward.  _Sister_ , she’ll say later, too exasperated to blush,  _there are things I would rather not know about you._

 _There are things I didn’t know about myself_ , you’ll think, and you’ll dream of a tan that goes on forever and seawater on your lips, and you’ll wake so dehydrated that you might have drowned.

You make no secret of your regard for her. Isabela gives as good as she gets, and on a night when you’re both deep in your cups you can give quite a lot. It’s worth it to hear her peals of laughter—no matter that she finds it all a riveting game. It embarrasses everyone except for Varric, and even he clears his throat sometimes, with a wary sidelong glance at you, as if to say  _I wouldn’t go there, sweetheart_ , but you’ve never seen the point in playing it safe.

You raced your brother to Ostagar just to prove you could kill more darkspawn with daggers than he could with a big overcompensating sword, and nothing horrible happened to you  _there_.

Something horrible will happen to you here—but not yet.


	2. Circling

She fights with a natural grace that you’ve never had.

Oh, you’re technically proficient. A perfectionist about it, in fact. Very precise. Long hours of hard practice. But Isabela dances in battle, a fluid, intuitive movement you wish you could touch. Her laughter, carefree, echoes out over the sands of the Wounded Coast. You stick a knife in the throat of a Tal-Vashoth: quick, clean, pleasant death gurgle. But she cartwheels through the air, vanishes in a puff of smoke, and reappears behind her victim with the blade already at his throat.

He didn’t see her coming. Neither did you. The sweat on her face, the blood on her hands—your gut wrenches and she meets your gaze, copper eyes glinting like she knows about the turmoil in your stomach.

In the firelight, halfway back to Kirkwall, Isabela tries to teach you her ways. She laughs at you often. You bask in it; you know she means well.

“Relax, sweet thing,” she purrs in your ear, her thumb tracing the ridge of your hipbone. You can’t feel her skin through your shirt, but it’s a near thing. She’s bested you; her dagger’s at your throat, just beneath your chin, her front pressed up against your back, the exact way she disarmed the Tal-Vashoth not three hours ago.

“This wasn’t an invitation to grope me, Isabela,” you snipe back, and she just chuckles and withdraws, letting you go.

She doesn’t seem surprised when you drop, sweep her legs out from under her, land her on her ass—in the next moment you’re straddling her thighs, knife hilt-deep in the sand beside her ear. She waggles her eyebrows and wiggles her hips, and the two of you dissolve in giggles. Bethany sighs; Aveline groans.

“Too raunchy for you, big girl?” Isabela taunts. She unseats you with ease, but before she can pin you again, you roll back to your feet, plucking your dagger from the ground.

“Slatern,” Aveline mutters.

“Oooh,” Isabela whispers, giving you an exaggerated wink. You ignore the warning passed on by Aveline’s green eyes. The hilt of the dagger is warm in your hand.

You can go another round.


	3. Never Have I—

“This cannot be your idea of fun.”

Anders frowns across the table at where your chin is braced on your hand. He’s the only one resisting, the spoilsport; he’s nursed the same stale mug all night. Even Merrill is drinking, tiny teacup of ale and all. Isabela lets her get away with sips, though, because the elf is tiny, and you’re worried about her tolerance levels.

“What else would we do with this perfectly good coin?” you demand.

“Never have I ever kissed a shemlen,” Merrill chirps, and the entire table groans as one and drinks—all except Fenris.

Isabela elbows you in the side, cocks an eyebrow, and flashes a glance at the elf, toying with his mug with a scowl on his face. “I could fix that,” she stage-whispers, and you giggle behind your hand. Maker, you giggle at her enough as it is, but get you good and hanged and everything she says is hilarious.

“Never have I ever kissed an elf,” Varric announces in retaliation, smirking—too kindly to be cruel—at Merrill, who sips politely. This is all getting a bit childish, but they are that way when they’re drunk, your merry band of misfits. Not thirty minutes ago they were throwing around phrases like,  _Never have I ever killed a darkspawn_ , or  _Never have I ever been to Orlais_ , and now it’s all dissolved into kissing.  _It all comes back to kissing_ , you think.

“Never have I ever kissed a woman,” Aveline says, with a plain glance at Isabela, who shrugs and downs the last of her drink.

The men do, too, except for Fenris—again. Drunkenly, you try to work out who he might have kissed, then, and male dwarf seems the only combination left—or male Qunari, perhaps. You giggle. Isabela cocks an eyebrow at you again.

“Drink, Hawke.”

“I,” you declare haughtily—or as haughtily as you can, with one word slurring to the next, “have never kissed a woman.”

She doesn’t prepare you for what comes next, just hooks an arm around your hip and draws you in—like you weren’t already pressed to her side to begin with—and then her lips are soft and parted and thorough on yours, and she tastes like sour ale and smells like cinnamon where your nose is touching her cheek, and someone at the bar whoops; you’re not sure who.

“Drink, Hawke,” she admonishes, a glint in her eye, and you hide your pinked cheeks in your beer.


	4. Slander

You stagger, quiet as you’re able, into the Lowtown shack you share with too many family members. Your movements aren’t as precise as usual. Too much bad ale. But you do manage to kick off your boots and your leggings and pull on a fresh shirt before collapsing into the lumpy bed you share with your sister.

She sniffs disdainfully. “You smell like a gutter.”

You wiggle close enough to stick your nose pointedly in her dark hair, inhaling deeply. “You’re not much better,” you chide, and she gives you a playful push.

You lay there in the dark, side-by-side, listening to Gamlen’s snores; you can only feel your mother’s presence in this house in her silence.

“So,” she says eventually. “Isabela.”

“Don’t,” you grouse. “I’m sorry if I embarrassed you, but she was the one—”

“No, that wasn’t what I was going to say.” She rolls onto her elbow to look at you through the dark, her nose still wrinkled, cheek propped on her hand. “You really like her. I’ve never seen you like this with anyone.”

You almost joke that there never could be anyone—that if anyone had gotten too close, and found out the secret about your little sister, yours would have been the hand that killed her—but, in a moment of sobriety, you don’t say that.

“Like what?” you protest instead. “I’m like this with everyone.” It’s not a lie. You flirt with  _Varric_ , for Andraste’s sake; it’s part of your charm, the way you put people at ease.

“Say what you like,” she says, lips twitching smugly, “but you’ve never been so giggly before.”

You pull a pillow over your head. Even the thought—Isabela serenading you with a boisterous, rather explicit song from her perch on the table beside a snoring Merrill as you made your way out to the street—threatens to wrench yet another giggle out of you.

“I’m not giggly,” you grumble, trying to sound insulted.

She hums. “Whatever you say, Sister.”


	5. Drag-on

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quest tag: _The Bone Pit_.

You haven’t been seriously wounded since you came to Kirkwall.

Not since Ostagar, really. You remember the exact arrangement of grotesquerie on the face of the darkspawn that sliced your knee open. It was trampled a second later by a passing ogre, and you dragged yourself far enough out of the fight to stay safe until a passing healer fixed you. It still bothers you though, every now and then; after a long day of fighting it aches like it never did before. Sometimes you rub the knotted scar covering the old wound—no time for vanity in a fight like that—and remember the sickening look of relief on Carver’s face when he found you alive.

Andraste’s ass, you miss that little shit.

“Ostagar sounds like a drag, sweet thing,” Isabela says, her voice light and easy despite the blood caking up on your tunic. She gives an encouraging heave and you move your feet a little more, shuffling in the sand. Kirkwall is in sight, but your head swims dangerously. “Next time, run  _away_  from the darkspawn.”

Bethany curses under her breath behind you and places a small hand on your ribs. For a moment, your head clears. The sun is too bright; the day is too hot. You hear hounds baying, but this isn’t Ostagar. There’s only your mabari, whining at your heels.

“Don’t worry, Sunshine,” you hear Varric murmur, liquid voice reassuring. “Anders has fixed worse.”

Isabela’s fingers are tight on your wrist, keeping your arm draped over her shoulders. “Tell me about the ogre again, Hawke,” she teases. There’s pressure on your pulse point. She’s not even trying to be subtle. Your heartbeat flutters, traitorous, against her fingers. “I don’t think I got enough details the last time I drank you under the table.”

The next thing you know is chokedamp, thick in your sinuses, and the crackle of big blue hands pressed hard against your ribs. Voices flutter in through the darkness, moths dancing too near the flame.

“What was she thinking?” Anders laments.

“ _What do they feed those things_ , probably,” Varric chuckles.

“We didn’t know there would be a dragon,” Bethany whispers. She’s stroking your hair, you think, which—gross—because last you checked, it was bathed in dragon blood.

“Hawke will be fine, sweetness,” Isabela reassures. “And we’ll get paid, and Varric will tell exaggerated tales of how we bested a dragon.”

“I don’t think you need to exaggerate this one,” Anders points out curtly. “Now, Hawke, this is going to hurt…”

You don’t scream, but you don’t open your eyes. There are still fingertips digging into your pulse point, holding you down.


	6. Hat Shop

Instead of chasing down a missing woman, you take it easy for a few days. It’s not strictly  _necessary_ ; you felt just fine not ten minutes after Anders finished closing the wound.

(“Setting your bones,” he said, the feathers on his shoulders smoking a little. “Healing punctured organs. Stopping massive internal bleeding. Repairing torn muscle. So help me, Hawke—”)

For Bethany’s sake, you let yourself have a little vacation. You didn’t exactly accrue time off with Athenril, and making enough coin for food on top of putting some aside for the expedition too has taken up all of your time—but if it will stop your sister looking at you as though you’re a ghost, you’ll take the day off.

“Oooh,” Isabela croons, stopping outside a shadowy doorway in Lowtown. Her arm is linked through yours, elbows knocking companionably. “Look! We should get you a hat, Hawke. You’d look positively fetching in a hat.”

“Am I not fetching enough without one?” you ask innocently, and get a swat on the nose for your trouble.

Fenris and Bethany follow you in—Bethany smiling wanly at the packed displays, Fenris only frowning at the bursts of color around him. You suspect that Fenris is part of some secret security detail, installed to keep you from hurting yourself again, and that’s why he’s more broody than usual.

Isabela sweeps a great triangular thing off a peg and plonks it down on your head. You examine it in a cracked, dusty mirror. It has fantastic bloodred plumage; you’ll give it that much, at least.

“You could be a captain,” Isabela says proudly, tugging a lock of hair across the bridge of your nose. Her approving smile is warm on your skin.

You sigh theatrically. “If only I had a ship.”

This time, you get a punch on the arm. Recent brush with death or no, Isabela doesn’t coddle. “You mock my pain,” she accuses, stealing the hat back and holding it dramatically to her heart.

“I don’t think _I_  am the one mocking anyone’s pain, here,” you comment, pointedly rubbing your shoulder.

“Oh, please,” she scoffs, sweeping the hat onto her own head. “You were bitten through the  _stomach_. Limbs are still fair game.”

She always looks as though she belongs on a ship, but especially now, finger-combing her hair out from beneath the triangular monstrosity. Your eyes catch and hold on the gold stud glittering below her lips. You wonder how that would feel if—

Bethany steps on your foot. You stop staring, but not before catching Isabela’s smirk.


	7. The Hanged Man's Finest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quest tag: _The First Sacrifice_.

“So. You were married?”

Isabela’s stomach tenses a bit beneath your head. The two of you are sprawled on Varric’s bed; Varric himself is snoring into his papers one room over. Your companions are in a varying state of disarray on the chairs, the table, and the floor. It was a night of heavy drinking for everyone.

The week you had, you deserve it.

“Were you?” she snarks back. There’s the soft  _glug-glug_  of a bottle being upended.

“No,” you snicker, rolling onto your stomach to look at her. You stay pressed close, though, because you’re drunk and her warmth is nice, and you haven’t gone without all evening; it would be a shame to start now.

“Lucky you,” she says—an attempt at her usual humor—but it comes out a little flat. Her copper eyes don’t meet yours; they stare at the ceiling, a hand playing idly with the bottle.  _The Hanged Man’s finest_ , Varric had called it.  _The Hanged Man’s finest scam_ , you think.

“Sorry,” you say softly—maybe a little too gentle for your usual give-and-take—and you’re not sure what you’re apologizing for.

She sighs, and her hand puts aside the bottle and drops to your hair instead. Relieved, you nestle into Varric’s pillow beside her. Her fingers scratch gently against your scalp. Your eyelids were already heavy; you don’t want to stop looking at the curve of her cheek, but it’s hard to stay awake.

“Don’t be, sweet thing,” she says. “Look at us, becoming maudlin drunks under our own noses. Pity.”

“Inconceivable,” you agree, smiling a little, but the heaviness of the mood falls back almost immediately. It’s important to say this, you think, even if you’re not sure why. “Perhaps she got away,” you say, thinking of the ring. “Perhaps she laid a false trail—just to escape Ghyslain, once and for all.”

Isabela’s eyelashes fan dark across her cheek when she closes her eyes. This close, you could almost count them, if your vision wasn’t so blurry.

“We’re not all so lucky,” she says. “Go to sleep, Hawke.”

You close your eyes too and dream of waves washing up on the Wounded Coast, bringing in shipwreck after shipwreck. Isabela’s laughter is soft in the distance, always just beyond your reach.


	8. Thief

It’s a few minutes before you realize that you’ve been had, and when you do, you slink right back into the ice-cold water. You would be bright red if it weren’t for the unholy temperature of the stream.

“Isabela!” you shout, teeth chattering.

But the stream is far from camp—out of earshot, at least—and how did she pull off stealing every stitch of your clothing without at least letting loose a maniacal giggle, anyway?

She was watching you. Bathing. Naked.  _Maker._  The red flush crawling up your neck has nothing to do with embarrassment anymore.

Your toes are going to freeze off if you stay in this stream much longer.

“Fine,” you mutter defiantly. The soft breeze will dry you and your dripping hair soon enough, even if it raises goosebumps on your skin in the meantime. “You could have at least left me boots, Bela,” you grumble, carefully feeling out the grass with your toes.

You try to contemplate something mundane on the walk back to camp; too bad you can’t remember the Chant of Light, not a single verse, and the ache in your belly just gets more insistent.

The fire washes warm over your skin as you stride into camp. Aveline politely averts her gaze, though the slight tug on the corner of her mouth gives away her amusement. Bethany, red-faced and giggling wildly, hides her face in her bedroll. You prop your hands on your hips—though instinct demands that you cross your arms over your chest instead—and stare down at Isabela.

“Lose something?” she asks, all innocence. Her eyes rove your bared skin, eyebrow cocked in something like appreciation.

“If you wanted to see me naked, you only had to ask,” you say sweetly. Maybe the glow of the firelight will hide your traitorous fair skin, slowly heating under the caress of her gaze.

“Marian!” Bethany wails, still laughing uncontrollably into her blanket.

“I was bored,” Isabela says with a little shrug. She reaches into her bedroll and comes up with the bundled fabric of your smallclothes. “This was more fun than asking.”

She doesn’t look away while you dress, and you fiercely match her stare. The smirk at the corner of her mouth betrays a hint of admiration, a little glimmer of pride, as though your reaction surprised her and she likes it—likes you.

“Duel?” she offers cheerfully.

It’s not as if you’d be able to sleep, anyway.


	9. Show Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quest tag: _Shepherding Wolves_.
> 
> “It’s not like this job means we’re on opposite sides. The good you do, it seems rather appropriate. Besides, I make the patrol schedule, and I don’t plan to lead from a desk.”

Your pulse is hard and heavy against your ribs.

When Aveline was promoted to guard-captain, she told you that the two of you were still on the same side. She spouted nonsense about the  _good_  you do.

The good you do—Aveline’s a bold-faced liar. There is no good in what you do. There is, in fact, no good in Kirkwall at all; there are only desperate thugs, Chantry sisters with hidden agendas, and people who would rather die than be free.

Your sinuses ache. You haven’t felt so caged—so trapped—since Lothering burned. There are still little red flakes under your nails and the scent of charred flesh in your hair, and no matter how far you walk, the brisk night air can only do so much.

“If you’re looking for more giant spiders, you’re going the wrong way.”

You turn on your heel, dagger already in hand, but your would-be assailant is safe, ten whole paces back. Isabela watches you, her posture loose, relaxed. You know that it isn’t genuine.

“I thought you were keeping watch.” Your voice isn’t light enough. “Or have you decided that the boys will bond while fighting their way out of an ambush together?”

She chuckles. “I would pay a whole sovereign to see that.” Her eyes stay on your face, but she holds out a hand, palm-up. “Hawke.”

Your grip on your dagger tightens. “Go back to camp.”

You catch the glimmer of her eyes before she’s gone in a puff of smoke; just as quick, your belt wrenches backward and the sheath clinging to your shoulder loosens. Her dagger touches your throat, forcing your chin up.

“Drop it,” she orders, businesslike. Her hand is there, catching the blade before it falls. “Good girl,” she murmurs, and your blood burns, a confused pulse of rage mixed with desire. When she reappears in front of you, her arms are open wide.

“Come on,” she invites. “Show me what you remember.”

Your muscles react before you tell them to; your blood rages, carrying you through the rush. She doesn’t dodge, just rolls with the brunt of your weight. Her boots catch you in the stomach and shove, and then you’re flying. When your fingers and toes find purchase, you take off again.

You’re lost in it until you’ve pinned her down, fingers clawing into shoulders, thighs imprisoning hips. She smirks; with the little range of motion she has, she gets her hands on your waist. Her fingertips dig in. You giggle, knee-jerk, and let her go, suddenly exhausted deep down in your bones.

You let your limbs sink into the grass. When you close your eyes, the fire is finally gone.

“It isn’t your fault, you know,” she says eventually. “Some…people…just aren’t like us.”

“What a terrible way to live,” you murmur, trying to regain your humor.

“What a terrible way to die,” she agrees, slipping her fingers through yours.


	10. Before

You won’t miss the muggy scent of ale, forever on your uncle’s breath; you won’t miss the red-rimmed eyes, cast balefully at you from Mother’s chair in the corner; you won’t miss the rotting floorboards or the dirt washed up in the corners or the mattress with its uneven lumps.

You’ll miss  _her_ , though.

The night before the expedition leaves, you go down to the Hanged Man and bump shoulders with her at the bar. She orders you a drink and you both nurse your mugs, quiet for once, the silence laden.

“I hate to say it, but you might be better off taking Aveline,” she says finally, with a sigh that says she really  _does_  hate to say it. “I could look out for little sis for you, if you like.”

“Look out for her?” You laugh, the alcohol warm in your belly. “Lock her in the Blooming Rose until she dies of embarrassment, you mean?”

She laughs, too. “I’m only saying—it wouldn’t be terrible to have a big sword at your back. What about Fenris? He would keep you all…safe.” Her eyes go a little misty. “Maybe warm, too.”

“Isabela,” you groan, elbowing her in the ribs.

“What?” she squawks. “It’s the Deep Roads, Hawke. Not a spot of sky in sight. You’re going to need comfort.”

“I’ll manage,” you inform her, trying for stern, but she just rolls her eyes.

You wonder if she’ll even be here when you get back. She hasn’t managed to gather a crew, let alone commandeer a ship, in the last few months—but a few weeks without you dragging her along on every job…maybe she’ll finally set sail. Maybe her mysterious missing relic won’t be enough to keep her here.

“Be careful, Hawke.” Her eyes, liquid in the dim light, flick to yours. “Kirkwall would be boring without you.”

You keep the smirk at the corner of her mouth tucked away, a talisman against the darkspawn that rise up to meet you.


	11. After

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quest tag: directly post- _The Deep Roads Expedition_.

You can’t stay here.

You can’t stay here, in this shack, with that red-rimmed stare.

The drunks at the Hanged Man put up a bedraggled cheer of “Hawke!” as you weave through them and up the stairs, heart pounding, palms sweating. You raise a fist to Varric’s door. Little streams of dust rain down where your hand connects.

“I think he’s out, sweet thing.”

Isabela’s moving toward you with a familiar smirk when you turn around, and you know, you  _see_ , the instant she catches sight of your face. Her eyebrows draw in and her saunter falters and there’s a quick flash in her coppery eyes, a brief little wrinkle of fear.

She doesn’t know. Maker, she doesn’t know.

“Have you seen him?”

It doesn’t sound like your voice at all.

“You just spent four weeks in the Deep Roads with the man,” she teases, but her eyes are cautious. “Surely you don’t need him right now?”

You don’t need  _him_. You need a place to stay. Someone you can trust. Somewhere you can hide. And the anonymity of Lowtown is good enough; and Varric will understand, and won’t question you, and will let you be; and tomorrow, maybe, you can go back to work picking up the pieces, but right now—

“Hawke?”

You can hardly hear her through the frantic race of your heart.

“You were right,” you say. You don’t know how else to tell her. You don’t know how you’re going to tell  _anyone_. Carver was hot-headed and impulsive and a  _show-off_  and that’s what got him killed but you’re the one,  _you’re_  the one who dragged Bethany down into that darkness and you’re the one who didn’t protect her well enough during those claustrophobic fights and you’re the one, you’re the one, it’s your fault  _your fault_ —

“I should have left her here,” you choke out. You don’t know when you sank to the floor but you’re there now, elbows braced against knees, fingers clenched in hair, and your whole body is quivering and it won’t stop.

She kneels down in front of you, smudged through the tears in your eyes, but you can smell her warmth—cinnamon and whiskey and the usual dirt—and you don’t want it, don’t want the comfort; you’re shaking and trying to stop crying because this isn’t your place, this isn’t your grief, you have no right because it’s your fault  _your_  fault your  _fault_ —

She’s wrapping her arms around you, pulling you in even though you struggle. “Shh,” she murmurs, a hand gently untangling yours from the grip it has in your hair. She threads her fingers through and pulls your forehead against her shoulder. You’re too weak, shaking apart under her hands, to keep resisting. It’s been so long since you last cried.

“She’ll never forgive me,” you stutter out between sobs, “the look on her face when I handed her over to that Grey Warden, but she was dying and there was no other way, I should have left her here, I should have left her  _here_ …”

Isabela’s arm winds around your waist, pressing you away from the door. “Come on, sweet thing,” she says softly, so gentle, so calm. “Can you stand?”

She supports most of your weight herself, pulling you upright and encouraging you down the hall, and then you’re through a door and she’s pressing you onto a bed. You hide your face back into your hands—you’re hiccuping now, Maker, why can’t you  _stop_ —while she tugs off your boots. The bed dips as she settles on it beside you, and then she drags you down with her, back into her arms. She tangles her legs through yours and strokes your hair. You cling to her, because there’s nothing else to do, wet face pressed to her throat.

“Let it out,” she says—like an order, like permission—and you cry until you can’t anymore, wrung out and tired with her body sheltering yours.


	12. Wounded

You have nightmares about the Deep Roads: bright teeth and gleaming wet eyes; disjointed arms and junked blades; the rot, the screams, the ragged breathing. Isabela keeps you tucked safe in her room with a growing pile of blankets, the door shut against the sound of the world moving on, and doesn’t leave you alone for longer than ten minutes at a time.

“I’m fine,” you try to tell her, but the words won’t come. You haven’t gotten a full sentence out in three days.

“I brought you someone,” she informs you, smile on her lips, and whistles between her fingers.

The door hits the wall hard enough for you to feel it across the room. A blur of brown fur darts over the threshold and surges onto the bed, panting happily.

“Varric says he’s been prowling Lowtown the last few nights,” Isabela says. The mabari whines, heavy and familiar on your lap. You rest a tentative hand on his head. He nudges your wrist with a wet nose, pushing into your touch. “Probably couldn’t stand being left in that house anymore.”

A chuckle emerges, reedy and feeble, from your throat.

“Come on,” she says, holding her hand out to you. “He could use some fresh air.”

You see right through her, but you don’t tell her that.

The Wounded Coast combs windy fingers through your hair and burns a blush into the skin that hasn’t seen daylight in weeks. You feel the light sting of it on your cheekbones, your forehead, the bridge of your nose. Isabela’s shoulder bumps yours while you walk, Bear prancing ahead, yelping when cool waves wash up around his paws.

You do feel better. You hate yourself for it.

The mabari freezes at the shoreline; his ears flatten back against his head. Isabela tenses beside you. Your hand has already darted up to seize your dominant dagger.

“Raiders,” Isabela murmurs. “Balls.”

“Nothing we can’t handle.” Your voice is rusty from disuse, but she doesn’t seem surprised; she only smirks, eyes lighting up at the prospect of loot.

You never lost yourself in battle before. Your thoughts were always sharp, quick, every movement controlled by direct commands. Now, though, you move—fluid and thoughtless from one victim to the next—and it passes like a dream, over before you’ve noticed it begin.

“Bethany’s a strong woman,” Isabela says after, when you’ve both kicked off your boots upwind of the corpses. Your feet sink a little deeper in the damp sand. “I know she made it, Hawke.”

You nod, drawing in a shaky breath. “We should send her a care package,” you try. “When we find out where she is.”

“I know just the thing,” Isabela says happily, fishing a battered book out of the stuff you took off the raiders.

“No,” you groan, eyeing the cover.

“Spoilsport,” she grouches, smiling.


	13. Profit

The grief lingers, but the world moves on, and so do you.

Varric finds buyers for the more desirable treasure you hauled out of the Deep Roads almost immediately—trinkets, pretty things, obviously worth ten times their weight in gold. That’s what you get, anyway, when he putters down the hall to hand off a heavy purse to you. You feel sick just looking at it and pull the drawstring again immediately.

“There’s more,” Varric tells you. He’s haggard around the eyes, his hair distinctly less well-kempt than usual.

“You took your share, I hope,” you say.

The dwarf tips his head. “And gave Blondie his.”

You remember Anders, features furtive with guilt, the rank stench rising from darkspawn corpses, and swallow compulsively. “Maybe he’ll finally crawl out of Darktown,” you joke feebly.

“If I was a betting man, I’d say that coin has already been spent.” Varric pulls up a chair. “Not on a better, featherless coat, either. That clinic is going to be well-stocked for years.” He nods to the purse. “I’ll invest the rest, if you’d rather—”

“Yes,” you cut him off, relieved. “This is enough to buy back the estate.”

“Oh, Hawke,” Isabela moans, bumping the door open with her hip. She’s carrying drinks and stew, and she hands one of each off to Varric before bringing the tray over to you. “You’re not really going to move to Hightown, are you? How could you even think of leaving Lowtown?”

“The smell is a compelling argument for some,” Varric mutters, picking up his spoon.

“The stew is another,” you add helpfully, poking a questionable lump in yours.

“Please,” Isabela dismisses, folding her legs beneath her. Her shoulder bumps yours. “It gives the place character.”

Varric watches, eyes sharp, and you feel suddenly self-conscious. Strange, how you’ve only just realized what this must look like: the mussed sheets, your mabari snoring in the corner, how comfortable the two of you are. You haven’t been back to Gamlen’s since that first terrible night. You’ve been in her room, in her bed— _cuddling_ , which you didn’t actually know was a thing she approved of—and you want to say,  _This isn’t what it looks like_.

You can’t believe how disappointed you are by that.


	14. Gasp

“Just try to breathe, Hawke. It will be over soon.”

You can feel the blue hand, fingers spread between your shoulder blades, trickles of cold sinking deep into your muscles. Your heartbeat is too erratic against your ribs, your lungs trying and failing to expand all the way. You’re dizzy with the lack of oxygen, but your body’s too busy betraying you to give you what you need.

“Easy, sweet thing.” Isabela’s hands are tight around yours. Your breath hisses in your throat, too shallow.

“I’ve seen it before,” Anders says, quietly enough that you almost don't hear him. “The Deep Roads...they can have a terrible effect.”

Slowly, the hold on your chest loosens. You breathe a little easier, the black spots at the corners of your vision receding. The stench of blood is still heavy; the havoc it released on your insides, though, is draining away, leaving you clammy and exhausted.

“All right, Hawke?” Aveline asks. She’s standing apart, sword still bared, keeping watch; her green eyes sweep the shadowy cellar with calm regularity.

Anders pulls his hand back from your spine, but Isabela’s grip merely loosens. “We might try steering clear of close, dark spaces for a while,” Anders suggests, shaking out his hand. “It’s going to exacerbate your anxiety.”

His tone is careful—his clinic voice, the one he uses on stubborn patients. “Are you suggesting I take a vacation?” you ask, arching your back a little to straighten out the kinks.

“You’ll be busy restoring this old place, anyway,” Isabela says, giving your fingers a last gentle squeeze.

You finally glance up to catch her gaze, heavily shadowed by the dark cellar. Something apprehensive shifts in her coppery eyes, but then she lets your hands go and stands up, and you’re half-convinced you imagined it; she seems as at ease as she ever is.

“Right,” you say, too weak for your usual jests. The estate—inconveniently marred with the fresh slaver corpses decaying around you—needs a lot of work before it’s fit for human habitation.

“Give it a month,” Anders says, patting you awkwardly on the shoulder. “You’ll be back to killing spiders in dark caves in no time.”

Aveline snorts, but Isabela doesn’t. She’s already heading for the stairs, leading the way up into the gloom of your mother’s old home. You crack your neck, get stiffly to your feet, and follow her. The overgrown rooms packed with dust and mold and plantlife are still cavernous somehow--so gapingly empty. You sigh, rubbing absently at the hard knot still lingering right below your clavicle.

“There’s always the Hanged Man,” Isabela remarks, forever the optimist. “You could take out a room.”

You smile. It’s certainly more appealing than the idea of living here.


	15. Ascension

When you leave the Hanged Man and start sleeping in the cleared foyer of your cavernous mansion, you and Isabela don’t talk about it. There’s no  _goodbye_ , or  _thanks for having me_ ; there’s just you and your few possessions, making camp in a lonely Hightown estate, your mabari curled up on your ankles at night and a couple of lost dwarves for company.

“We’ll have this place fixed up before you know it, messere, don’t you worry,” Bodahn says after too long lamenting about Bartrand, a topic that makes your chest clench up and your palms sweat.

You aren’t ready for things to go back to normal yet: for nighttime gatherings at the Hanged Man, for jobs that will get you dirty and exhausted and possibly dead, for your mother to look on you with disappointment. You don’t go back to Lowtown. For weeks, your days are governed by the shifting of rubble, the impersonal conversations with carpenters and designers, and the lonely nights that leave you with sleep headaches and cramps in your lower back.

You’re busy trying not to think about Isabela, and you’re not even sure why. Before the Deep Roads, you would have paid a whole sovereign to get a few minutes to yourself, just so you could fantasize about her bright eyes and generous curves and release some frustration alone on a lumpy mattress. Now, though, you know what it means to feel the pressure of her hands and her warmth in the night and all that seems more intimate than a drunken kiss ever was, and examining it too closely makes you shivery and afraid.

She’s your friend, maybe the best friend you’ve ever had. The ache in your chest has less and less to do with lust, and you know it, and you hate it.

You’ve never been able to afford The Blooming Rose before, but you walk in with your chin up and no armor and a confidence you’ve faked for years. Madame Lusine only betrays a second of surprise at the coin pressed into her palm. Adriano leads you with a wink and a smile to an airy, well-lit room, the scent of sex light on the air, half-hidden beneath the perfume of this place. He laughs when he finds your hidden daggers, and for a while, you forget soft curves and luminous eyes and the great rift suddenly open between her and you, filling you with uncertainty.


	16. Backpedal

Your first night at the Hanged Man when the estate is finally finished is so familiar that you feel as if you've stepped back in time. You all get spectacularly drunk (except Anders) and play too many rounds of Wicked Grace, most of which you lose, because you can’t be bothered to pay attention. You’re too preoccupied with Isabela’s warmth at your side and the pit in your stomach.

“You used to be better at this, Hawke,” Isabela taunts, comparing another hand with a wicked smirk.

By now, you’re listing onto the table, elbow propped on the surface, chin held up by your palm. You wonder at what point you turned to face her, straddling the bench so that her legs bracket yours, the inside of her thighs pressed against the rough fabric of your trousers. You wish pointlessly that you weren’t wearing pants.

“I’m out of practice,” you protest, laying down your hand.

“Clearly,” she teases, dropping her cards. Her hand lands on your thigh, warm through the fabric, and you jolt a little.

You used to touch each other like this all the time. It was easy, expected—the bump of your elbows, a hand on your bicep, your head on her shoulder. But when you look up, it’s not like before. Her eyes are bright and predatory, and she’s leaned toward you a little, and you know that if you played along, that if you shifted in, you would be the one she pulls to her room; you would stumble, a little drunk, and she would catch you with her lips; and in the morning, nothing would change.

You jerk back, roll onto your feet, and nearly trip over the bench. Her hand, still warm, catches around your hip and keeps you from falling. You take a steadying breath.

“I should tell Mother,” you say, aware of the dark stain on your pale skin and that everyone at the table is looking at you, bemused by your uncharacteristic clumsiness. “About the estate.”

“Your loss,” Isabela chortles. “I’ll find someone else to play.”

You don’t go to Gamlen’s. You take your lonely self back to Hightown, crawl into your bedroll, and give in; you slip your fingers between your thighs and drag them through damp curls, and when you come apart with your cry muffled in your pillow, you’re not thinking about the last time with Adriano.


	17. Duty

You don’t face your mother again until you have a passive-aggressive letter from Bethany clenched in your hand.  _That’s my life now_ , it says.  _Survival. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?_

You wanted her to  _live_. Would it have been better to let her die down there, just another loved one the Blight took from you? Besides—maybe she isn’t free, but she doesn’t have to hide anymore. Perhaps someday she’ll see that. Your period of self-flagellation, though, is over.

Your hair is freshly washed, your clothes threadbare but clean, when you knock on Gamlen’s door. No armor, even if you think you could use it. You would rather face a giant spider  _naked_  than do this.

The door swings back. You hold out the letter like a combustion grenade, one that might go off any minute.

“Bethany survived,” you say. She takes the letter from your grasp and presses a trembling hand to her mouth as she reads. Her eyes gleam wet by the time they reach the end.

“You’ve been gone for weeks,” she says, looking up from the letter. Her voice hitches a little.

“I’ve been busy,” you hedge, already wishing you had taken up Isabela on shots at the Hanged Man instead. “I have something to show you.”

You’ve never been good at talking to one another; it’s difficult to call to mind the last conversation you had that ended in something other than exasperation or shouting. The walk to Hightown is blessedly silent, but your mother gasps when she sees the estate, the Amell crest hanging bright on the stone and the ivy trimmed back to expose the door.

“Oh,” she whispers, dashing tears from her eyes, “I wish Bethany and Carver could see this.”

Impossibly, she always knows how to make you feel worse. The consistency is almost comforting.


	18. Effulgent

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Ohhh, you mean the time I went digging for that stash?"

“You said, you  _swore_ , that there was going to be treasure.”

The tattered box in Isabela’s hands begs the contrary. It’s not a happy sight. You’ve been hiking around Sundermount for three bloody days, Merrill is not a healer, you are out of anything resembling a health potion, and passing bandits have terrible timing. The handkerchief pressed to the deep gash in your arm is already soaked through.

“I told you this was a waste of time,” Aveline says. “When have her leads ever actually led anywhere?”

“They lead plenty of places, big girl,” Isabela teases, wrist-deep in the useless box. “And I didn’t say anything about treasure. Just the relic.”

“I’ll rephrase,” you snap, your patience dwindling. Your arm hurts, damn it. “You swore that there was going to be a  _relic_.”

“Ah. Yes.” Isabela sighs, brushing dirt from her hands. “It was a bad lead.”

“I’ll make camp,” Aveline says, throwing a disgusted look at Isabela.

Isabela has the grace to look a little chagrined, especially when she notices you still glowering at her. “I can stitch that up for you,” she offers.

“I certainly can’t stitch it up myself,” you growl, stomping off toward a nearby stream.

She’s unusually quiet while you grit your teeth and do your best to clean the wound in the cold river. You can already feel the stiffness setting in; until you can get back to Kirkwall and Anders, your dominant arm is a loss. Isabela seems to hear you worrying. The jab of the needle is not gentle, but intended to rouse you.

“With Kitten and Captain Man-Hands looking out for us, I hardly think we’re going to need your extra dagger,” she scoffs. “Your face isn’t suited for brooding, Hawke.”

“Unless there’s something in that box to cheer me up, you’ll have to endure it,” you mutter.

She pulls the needle through your skin and pauses, rummaging through the box with her free hand. It comes up with a few papers. She goes on stitching your wound by touch alone, her eyes scanning the pages in her lap. You’ve just given up on trying to read the papers at your awkward angle when she lifts her amber eyes to yours.

“Hawke,” she says seriously. “My soul is wrapped in harsh repose.”

“What?” you ask, frowning.

“Midnight descends in raven-colored clothes,” she continues, still somber. “But soft...behold! A sunlight beam, cutting a swath of glimmering gleam. My heart expands; ‘tis grown a bulge in it, inspired by your beauty...effulgent.”

You stare at one another a long moment—you baffled, she wide-eyed and sincere—before she starts giggling, her gaze dropping back to your stitches. You groan, realization dawning.

“ _Effulgent_ ,” she snickers.

“Bad poetry?” you grouse, though it’s hard to hide the smile blooming on your lips. “That’s what’s in the box?”

“And an old boot,” she clarifies, tying off the last stitch. “But I thought you’d like the poem better.”

“I’d have to look effulgent up, first,” you say, but she just smiles and starts reading the next poem aloud.


	19. Corsets

Mother hosts an elaborate party not long after the final touches to the mansion have been approved. You invite every one of your merry band of misfits, because they’re the only ones who will make this a bearable affair.

Fenris and Anders pointedly stand on opposite sides of the room, but at least they don’t bicker. Merrill arrives with Varric in tow and coos over the grandeur of it all, including your own absurd dress. “Good to see you out of that armor, Hawke,” Varric says, and you know he means  _glad you’re taking some time off_. Sebastian valiantly rescues you from dancing with a leering nobleman’s son. While he leads you around the room, playfully berating you for your poor Chantry attendance, you spot Aveline huddled with a group of guards in the corner, deep in conversation.

They all come. Except Isabela.

You’re a little hurt. The sparkle of the estate is lost on you, and having her at your side would have made the evening marginally more tolerable, but the party is in full swing and she hasn’t showed.

“I’m sorry, Sebastian, I think I hear my darling warhound baying,” you lie. You drop a curtsy to the deposed prince and he gives a short bow in return. “Enjoy the party.”

Before your mother can spot you, you slip up the stairs, already ruffling a hand through your carefully styled hair. It’s very sleek, but you don’t think it suits you; your face is too bare with the strands tucked behind your ears.

“You can hear the noise on the street. It’s the talk of Hightown.”

You very nearly jump; Isabela is in your bedroom, her ass firmly planted on your desk, boots propped on the seat of your chair. The window is ajar, and your mabari apparently slept through the whole thing. Typical.

“Would it kill you to come in the front door, like a normal person?” you tease, propping a hand on your hip.

Her eyes trace appreciatively over the line your dress makes across your breasts. There’s nothing you can do about the blush—in the dim light, maybe she doesn’t see it—and you ignore the natural instinct to cross your arms over your chest.

“How would I break you out if I came in the front?” she asks. She holds one of your daggers out to you, hilt-first. “This will be a grand opportunity for you to practice fighting in a corset. You should do it more often.”

You take the compliment in the spirit it’s meant. Your mother gives a little frown of dismay when you straggle back into the estate a few hours later, flush with victory and laughter and mud caked into the hem of your new dress, but you hardly notice her.


	20. Heights

It's months before Bethany writes again, but the letter is addressed to Mother, not you.

You pick a fight with some dog lords on your way to the Hanged Man, just to get the rage out of your blood. One of Aveline's guards overhears the commotion and runs to fetch her, and then an assortment of your friends come staggering out of the tavern to make sure you don't die. By the time it's over, you feel sort of badly for the dead gang members. There are bodies on the ground from the market to the foundry district.

Anders jabs a finger at a nearby staircase, glaring at you. "Sit," he orders.

You sit, holding what might be a broken wrist out for him to examine. "Sorry," you mutter.

"You've got to stop doing this," he says. Under the irritation, there's a genuine note of worry in his voice.

"What, getting jumped by gangs?"

"No," Aveline interjects. " _Starting fights_ with gangs. There's a difference."

Isabela is the only one among them who doesn't seem interested in chastising you. She elbows Aveline in the side. "Have you ever thought about climbing those?" she asks, pointing at the crumbling walkways jutting out from the foundry buildings.

Aveline gives her a befuddled look. "No."

Isabela tucks her daggers away. "I bet I can get all the way to the top of that building there."

"I bet you'll fall and break your neck," Anders comments, "and believe it or not, I can't fix everything." He gently turns your hand over while his own lights up blue.

"Please," Isabela scoffs. "I won't fall."

She leaps up to the closest boards and hauls herself up, quick as a cat. Your mouth goes a little dry. Heights are not your strong suit.

She turns back, grinning at Aveline. "What's the matter, guard-captain? Are you afraid?"

You can't believe Aveline would take that bait, but on second thought, she's probably a little drunk. Isabela jumps for the next section of walkway, and Aveline rolls up her sleeves and darts after her, giving chase. After only thirty seconds of climbing, they're both breathless with laughter.

"Come on, Hawke," Isabela calls from twenty feet up.

You shake your head, gesturing at Anders. "Healer's orders." But you watch, ignoring the squeeze of discomfort while Anders heals your wrist, as Isabela climbs further toward the roof, her muscles bunching to heave her up. The view of her ass isn't bad from down here, either.

The blue light in your peripheral vision fades. Anders sighs. "I hope you know what you're doing," he mutters.

You don't look at him, afraid your face will give you away.


	21. Gravity

The pattern goes on: small jobs, near-death experiences, near-constant flirting, rare letters from Bethany (never addressed to you), trips to The Blooming Rose, too many noble parties and desperate escapes through your bedroom window. It takes time, but your sleep schedule evens out. Close, dark spaces don’t make your chest feel quite so tight. You still have nightmares, but their vivid colors fade.

Your friends visit you at the estate, every one—except Isabela, who only comes in through your window during parties, as though this is a tradition she’s too fond of to let go.

But you come home from idle browsing in the Hightown market one sundown, and she’s waiting by the desk, her skin washed golden in the firelight. Everything is about to change, but you’re drawn irresistibly toward her even so, the silence of the estate ringing in your ears.

There are a few words, playfully exchanged (you won’t remember them later); her amber eyes, falling to your lips, bright with hunger; the catch of breath in your throat when she touches you, palm wrapped around your hip, thumb tracing a ridge of bone. She’s only ever hinted before, only come close enough for you to dance out of reach, but you’re in the bracket of her arms now and there’s no more fight left in you.

She takes your hand and you tug her up the stairs. When she giggles under her breath, you do, too. You turn back to kiss her and she rolls over you like an ocean wave, giving you her weight, your fingers splayed under her thighs. She’s better than any dream, any fantasy, her hand tightening on your shoulder and in your hair, her breath little pants of approval against your mouth as you free her of her daggers by touch alone.

When you fall back on the bed, she falls with you, her lips insistent and wet and fluid on yours, fingers already scrambling at the laces and buttons of your clothing; yours untie her sash, slide up her bare thighs, pluck the bandana from her hair. She laughs against your neck, and shivers crawl down your spine. The buckles on her boots press cold into your legs.

She lets you sit up, her weight still in your lap, so that you can tug a few more laces and relieve her of her jerkin. Her back is warm beneath your hands, her breasts soft against your bare chest. Her lips tug at your earlobe. Her thighs squeeze around your hips. She pushes you back, drags your smalls down over your calves, and crawls back up your body wearing just boots and glinting golden jewelry; you feel the shocking cold of it where it touches you. She situates her thigh between your legs and  _grinds_ , greets the broken cry from your lips with a smothering kiss, and sensing you hanging on by fingernails, whispers, “Six things, remember?”

You learn how she tastes with her thighs hooked up over your shoulders; how she sounds when  _Hawke_  is just a ragged moan on her lips; how she smiles and sighs after she comes apart; how she feels, a warm tide burying you in the sand, a rush of pleasure before she recedes.

When she finally rolls from the sheets with a breathless laugh, you don’t ask her to stay; you know better than that. Nothing has changed, even if her voice is warm when she thanks you, even if her eyes linger on yours before she goes.

“You say  _feelings_  like you’re allergic,” you tease her, catching her hand and tugging her back for a last kiss. You can still taste yourself on her lips.

“Maybe I am,” she retorts with a smile.

“Go on, then,” you sigh, playing dramatic. “Break my heart and be free.”

Her features tip into uncertainty, just for a second, before her confidence slips back into place. It’s enough; it will have to be.

“If you ever want to do it again,” she suggests, all coy sincerity, and escapes through the window, dropping soundlessly out of sight.


	22. Reprieve

Her thumbs dig into the knots in your shoulders. You let out a groan, muffled by the pillow—half-pleasure, half-pain—and she chuckles, her voice far above you.

“You’d never know it from looking at you,” she muses. Her fingers fan out, hands kneading. It’s all you can do to breathe through the ebb and flow of pressure in your chest. “You’re horribly tense, Hawke.”

“Maybe I should make a point of stretching before battle more often,” you gripe, wiggling your ass as though to unseat her. She laughs again, a soft sound, thighs holding tight around your hips.

“You just need to relax, sweet thing.”

“What does it look like I’m doing?” you grumble, all fake irritation, but then she does the thing with her elbow again and you sigh, melting down into the mattress.

Sometimes, you get her to stay. It’s like leaving a trail of crumbs for a wild animal: it doesn’t always work, but sometimes the promise of round two (or round seven) will keep her around for this, for pointless hazy talk and massage techniques she picked up from an assassin named Zevran. You’d like to meet this assassin, you think.

“Tell the viscount to mount it,” she encourages, smoothing her hands down your spine. Her fingers linger—a scar here, a mark there, a roadmap of your more violent encounters. “This isn’t your job.”

“I can handle the Qunari,” you say, tipping her off. She rolls, landing on her back in the mussed sheets. You follow, draping yourself over her, holding your weight on your arms. She always looks a little vulnerable here, beneath you, but only for a split second—only until her characteristic smirk, only until she surges up to meet you.

Her kiss is dizzying; if not for the strong arms looped around your waist, you would fall back, bowled over by the force of her. You taste the sweat still on her lips, barely cooled.

“Oh, I’ve no doubt,” she murmurs, her eyes heavy with lust, and tips you backward.

You’ve already forgotten what you were talking about. A noncommittal “Mmm” hums in your throat, and she laughs, her breath tickling your inner thigh. You only squirm for a moment, and then—then her tongue is tracing you open, the gold stud below her lip a surprise wherever it touches, and your giggling subsides to panting, moaning, whimpering, a jumble of messy noise that only spurs her on.

It doesn’t matter that she’ll always leave, as long as she always comes back.


	23. Siren's Call: I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quest tag: _Night Terrors_.

If you’ve learned one thing since fleeing Lothering, it’s this: everyone has their breaking point.

You loathe the Fade. You’ve been here before, more often than you’d like; when Bethany was younger, the place frightened her, and you let her use her magic to wake you in her dreams, to protect her while she slept. Your daggers are as good here as they are out there, but they’re not real. Everything is at risk of vanishing beneath your fingertips—always. Your will must be strong.

Your will’s strong enough, but you don’t like to test it.

Gently, Isabela slides her knife free of Merrill’s ribcage. “Wake up, Kitten,” she murmurs, her voice a little too unnerved to be properly soothing. Merrill’s body vanishes before she hits the ground.

Aveline shivers beside you. You bite down a curse. You’ve never been in Templar Hall, and with this ghostly imitation doing its best to stir up old trauma, you’re glad Bethany never set foot here.

“What’s next, then?” Isabela says, trying a smirk. Aveline glares, knuckles white on her hilt. You sigh and lead the way across the hall.

The knight leaves Isabela to you when the time comes, taking her fight to the shades and desire demon and giving you room. Playing for keeps is different than sparring with Isabela. You suspect she’s been holding back; she’s a woman possessed, legs and daggers flying, and it’s all you can do to duck beneath her vicious blades.

She’s laughing, the only battle cry she knows, when you finally slide beneath her last strike and plant your weapon in her chest. There’s no blood, but you still catch her as she goes down, cradling her dead weight in your arms. The Fade clears from her eyes, cobwebs taking wind.

“Traitor,” you tease fondly.

Her lips part to retort, but then she’s gone, a fog evaporating through your fingers.


	24. Siren's Call: II

She tastes like whiskey—like she’s been drinking for hours. She’s warm with it, a little this side of giggly, her limbs loose around you when you push her up against the door of her room.

“I should betray you more often,” she laughs, leaning back from your frantic kisses, letting your lips stray down her neck instead. Her skin is salty with sweat. Her breath hitches a little when you find the right spot to suck.

Her dead weight in the Fade was nothing like her live weight here. Your arms start to complain with the effort of holding her up, but you like her like this, her legs wrapped around you, your fingers clenched tight in the muscle of her thighs. You can already feel her radiating warmth, filling your head with the swampy lust that makes it so impossible to think.

Good. If you can’t think, you won’t remember the dagger you put in her chest or the sound her mock-flesh and bone made as it gave.

“If a boat is all it takes, it’s a wonder you’re still here,” you huff, pretending indignity, and toss her toward the bed. She bounces gently, fingers already working on her laces as you toe off your boots and step out of your trousers.

“I could never leave you, my dear Hawke,” she teases, hooking her foot around your knee. “You’re too good at this.”

“It’s just the sex?” you ask, fingers tracing up the inside of her thigh. She squirms, driving your hand closer. “Nothing about my brilliant wit or cunning humor?”

She smirks. Her eyes fall to half-mast when your fingertips touch their mark, stroking through the warmth and wet at her core. “Those are just bonuses,” she breathes.

It was only her presence in the Fade that kept the demon from targeting you. After all, with her at your side, how could you be tempted by any watery imitation of your pirate queen?


	25. Ship in a Bottle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quest tag: _Blackpowder Courtesy_ , _A Ship for Isabela_.

“I got you something.”

Isabela looks up from her drink, raises a delicate eyebrow, and snorts. “You could use a bath, Hawke.”

She’s not wrong. The insides of a giant spider are clumped in your hair. A bit of renegade elf is smeared on your sleeve. You’re still listing to the side where a pommel caught you in the soft space between ribs and hip. The Arishok and Viscount both have just finished yelling toward you. Not  _at_  you. This bloody mess isn’t  _your_  fault. But your eardrums still hurt, anyway.

Your hands are clean, at least. You hold out the delicate glass. Her eyes light with curiosity, forgetting your grimy state for the moment. “Oh,” she coos, her lips tipping up. It’s a surprised little look, unadulterated joy; you’ve never seen her face quite like this. You breathe softly, afraid you’ll accidentally chase the expression away. “Isn’t that just the cutest thing. Where did you find it?”

“A mouldering corpse,” you say innocently, inspecting your fingernails, and she swats playfully at your arm. “The best thing is below decks,” you tease, smiling yourself, even though you’re beaten and bruised and horribly sore. She’s still holding the bottle up to the light, inspecting the miniature ship inside as though it’s the loveliest thing she’s ever seen. “A tiny replica of you, with a dozen sailors in attendance.”

She finally looks to you, her eyes softening—just a moment, just a bit, but you see it clearly. “Thank you, Hawke,” she says, cupping a hand protectively around the ship. Her free hand reaches out to take yours, her smile suddenly reckless with mirth again. “Let’s get you a bath, hmm?”

You sigh gratefully. “Maker, yes.”

She laughs and tugs you through the Hanged Man, stopping only to request hot water from Norah. Usually, the woman would laugh, but one look at your weary state and she acquiesces. In Isabela's room, she helps you strip out of your armor, but not before carefully placing the bottle on her table, pride of place, glinting in the candlelight.

You feel suddenly as if you might cry, and it has nothing to do with the black eye blooming painfully above your cheekbone.


	26. Blinders

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quest tag: _All That Remains_.

You’re not certain how a noble is supposed to mourn, and the one person who could have told you lies in pieces.

You wonder who Bethany will write to now. Will she address the letters to Gamlen, or will she have no choice but to finally send them to you? Will they be as hard as the only lines she ever wrote you—with the salutation  _Hawke_ , not  _Sister_ , not  _Marian_ —or will they be softened by grief?

Grief, for a noble, is a lot of sitting. The house shut up tight against the chill. Fires roaring—it’s the only thing you’ve heard in days. You’re being slowly buried here, under the heavy press of grave dirt.

Isabela comes in through the front door. You hear your mabari greet her in a series of low, worried yips. She shushes him; her echoing voice does some excavation work.

You wish she’d come in through the window—like a thief, not a friend.  _You forget who she is_ , Varric warned last week, before the last Amell closed her eyes forever. You watched Isabela at the bar. You were too drunk to tone down your enraptured gaze. It’s bad for both of you.

But Varric doesn’t know a thing. He doesn’t know how she smiles at you, awkward but gentle, when you look up and croak out a hello. He doesn’t know how she strokes your hair and lets you lean against her shoulder. He doesn’t know how she touches you—not like you’re made of glass, but like she’s putting you back together.

You think you love her a little, and that’s worst of all, because Varric’s not right but he’s not wrong, either. She doesn’t belong in Kirkwall. This is just her waystation, and maybe you’re her port in the storm, but the storm will be over soon.

Until then, you close your eyes and go on forgetting.


	27. Judgment

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quest tag: _Following the Qun_ , _To Catch a Thief_.

You’re not watching Petrice when the arrow strikes home.

No, your gaze is on Isabela: the way she watches the Qunari looming in the doorway, the little shuffling of her feet, the quick rise and fall of her chest. The subtle flicks of her eye constantly confirm his position; her muscles tense and relax, on the verge of bolting; her breathing is too ragged to be leftover fatigue from battle.

You feel it, looming closer—the thing that keeps her anchored in Kirkwall. The  _thing_ , not the person.

Your misfits disperse before the Viscount arrives. Aveline and Isabela make a beeline for your estate, already squabbling, and Varric offers up a sympathetic shrug. A headache is building in your temples. You’re tapped out; you have nothing left to offer a grieving Viscount, so you leave him with Seamus’s vacant body and take the long way home.

When you finally arrive to break up the full-blown shouting match in the foyer, Isabela can scarcely look you in the eye and Aveline swells with contempt. Of course she has lied to you; of course she has kept you deliberately out of the loop. You are not angry, or even disappointed, but you read her shame in the way she furtively charts escape routes. Haven’t you always known—haven’t you always accepted—what she is? How could she believe that you would judge her now?

You follow her to the foundry, to the thing that chains her to Kirkwall—to you—and you cut her free, knowing that she won’t stay. Merrill sniffs quietly, holding back tears. Aveline swears a blue streak. You pluck up the letter pinned to the fresh corpse and fold it up, tuck it away, deep in your armor where her words will be safe.

You ache because she’s gone, but more because she thinks this act requires forgiveness—more because, after all this time, she thinks you won’t understand.


	28. A Sudden Stop

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quest tag: _The Captain's Condolences_ , extended cut.

Aveline pours you a drink, and you stay a while, your boots kicked up on her desk. For once, she doesn’t gripe at you for it. You wish she wouldn’t give you a free pass, but she gets in these mothering moods sometimes, and you haven’t checked a mirror in the last few days, but you probably look as ragged as you feel.

“I liked her,” Aveline says finally, breaking the long silence. You know she’s not talking about your mother anymore. “Maybe it didn’t seem like it, but I thought we were friends.”

You clear your throat. “You were.”

She shoots you a bewildered look. “How can you say that? You, of all people? She left us here, Hawke. She left  _you_  here. In this...mess.”

You shrug, tipping a bit more scotch into your glass. It’s too fine for your coarse tastes; the smooth slip of it feels too clean after years of drinking the Hanged Man’s poison.

“I never expected her to stay forever,” you say finally. “I never  _asked_  her to stay.”

Aveline shakes her head. “I don’t understand how you endured it,” she says, almost apologetically. “That kind of uncertainty is crippling.”

“Au contraire,” you say, the ghost of a smile touching your lips. You’re not up to your usual humor, but you can still try. “It was exciting. Constant freefall. There’s nothing like it.”

“Freefall is fine until you hit the ground,” Aveline mutters.

“Well,” you say, waving this off. “Luckily I have my fearless guard captain to clean up the mess. Don’t rise,” you add as she wrenches her mouth open angrily. “I’m going to help, of course.”

She sighs, deflating again. “She left this city on the brink of war and took the one thing that could have stopped it with her. And she left you right in the middle of it. How can you forgive that?”

Your hearts squeezes in your chest. You have no quip for this, no smokescreen, no deflection; there is nothing left to say. Aveline nods, understanding, while you stare down at your drink and concentrate on breathing evenly through the sudden prickle at the corners of your eyes.


	29. Dance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quest tag: _Demands of the Qun_.

Kirkwall burns beneath your feet. An entire sleeve of your armor has been ripped away; the Qunari who did it left a deep gash in your dominant arm. The blood has clotted, just barely, but the arm is stiff. You don’t have time to do more than bind the wound closed and hope that it can be dealt with later.

You keep your gaze on the Arishok, ignoring the crown rusty with blood tumbling from his fingers. His dark eyes watch, inventorying your injuries. Your knee aches, and when you blink, you see Ostagar; you smell the stench of darkspawn. Sometimes you wonder if you were meant to die on that battlefield, if every fight since has been the last gasp of a cursed woman, too stubborn to go ahead and expire.

“Hawke,” he greets, descending.

Your weariness sinks deeper. If this is your death, so be it. You have already lost all; the cold flicker in Bethany’s eyes not one hour ago confirmed that. You will die with laughter on your lips, unnerve the giant with your last smile.

The doors blow open behind you just as all pretense of negotiation fails. Isabela swaggers in like she meant to be here all along.

“Nice timing,” you drawl, half-convinced you died while you weren’t paying attention. “I confess, I’d hoped you would wait until I was bleeding out on the cold ground—” 

She elbows you in the ribs. You wince. “You always were too dramatic,” she scoffs, shoving the weathered tome at the Arishok.

When you agree to the duel, Aveline actually has to drag Isabela away. You’re sort of touched. “Don't you dare!” she bellows; you doubt anyone but the guard captain could hold her back. “This is madness, duel me, duel  _me_ —!”

The Arishok draws his sword. You give a mock bow.

He is not as slow as he should be, even with the bulk of his broad body and two monstrous weapons to handle. You are not as quick as you can be, weighed down by the growing ache in your knee and the reduced effectiveness of your dominant arm. You’re wearing him down though, bit by bit, darting in and out of reach to attack and retreat, using the calculated movements of a mind honed by pain. A gash across his chest produces a roar. The plunge of a dagger into his thigh makes him stumble.

But you have fought your way through three districts to get here; he is fresh, carefully guarded by his soldiers. Your body fails you, in the end. You don’t get out of the way fast enough.

His sword slides straight through you. You grab the blade without thinking, hands warm and wet and slippery with your blood, trying to push back against his incredible force. When he shakes you off, a snarl of contempt on his lips, you hit the ground and black out for a few precious seconds.

Someone is desperately shouting your name.  _Hawke. Hawke. Hawke._

You open your eyes. He follows his sword down, and you barely roll away in time. When you surge up, you have no control of your own weight. You crash into the Arishok, your last knife tight in your left hand, and drive it deep into his neck.

You pass out again. You can’t imagine that anyone blames you.


	30. Cauterize

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quest tag: directly post- _Demands of the Qun._

Her hand is holding your guts in. That’s what it feels like, anyway.

“Don’t you dare die on me now.” She’s supporting the majority of your weight; your feet stagger forward, but only because she’s dragging you. You can actually feel the lifeblood dripping out of you, splattering on stone.

You fade out again. When you swim back to consciousness, you’re flat on your back next to a roaring fire, but you’re still shivering.

“She’s going into shock.” Blue hands, crackling with energy, hold firm around your ribs. “He missed her spine, but…”

It’s bad. You know it’s bad. You were hoisted into the air with a sword through your middle. You wish you’d had the decency to die then, rather than drag it out when no one can possibly heal you.

“Just fix her.” You’ve never heard that voice sound so broken, so scared. Trembling hands stroke your hair. Your head rests on a soft, muscled thigh. “Please fix her.”

Opening your eyes is a struggle, but you do it, fighting the magic that tries to drag you under. “Always knew you had a heart of gold,” you slur, trying to tease, but your voice hiccups and drags, disobeying every step of the way.

She shakes her head. She’s crying—you’ve never seen her cry before—but she looks furious, too, a vision of tears and rage. “I didn’t do it for them,” she snarls, but the lips she presses to your forehead are soft. “I did it for you,” she whispers. “It was always about you.”

It's even worse than you thought, if she's finally going soft on you.

“This is going to hurt,” Anders warns, pressing harder. “Hold her still.”

Strong hands press your shoulders to the ground; someone else does the same to your calves and knees. Blue light flickers through your eyelids. Someone screams, loud and long and continuous, on and on and on. You realize, when your throat starts to ache, that it’s you.


	31. Fool Me Twice

You’re sitting at the docks. Her bare feet dangle down, toes only just brushing the water. The sun is setting, but you can only look at her: the kohl smudged around her eyes, the little wrinkle between her brows, her flowing hair. Her bandana is wound through your fingers.

“I should have kept running, Hawke.” She doesn’t look at you. Her eyes, glinting like gold in the dying light, have no spark of mirth to warm them. She seems cold and sad and far away, even though you can  _feel_  her, right there. “I got it right the first time. It’s better for us both if I don’t stay.”

“Surely you jest,” you tease. “Who will keep me humble if you’re gone?”

She doesn’t seem to hear you. “I’ll miss you,” she murmurs, her voice thick and wet and  _wrong_. “I’m sorry, sweet thing.”

You feel lips, pressed soft and trembling to your forehead, fingers gently carding through your hair, and wake up drenched in cold sweat.

Your legs are half out of bed before a rush of dizziness hits. You bend, head held in your own hands, and take a deep breath, then another. You can see the bandages, wrapped stark and white around your middle, but no blood. The skin pulls, delicate and new.

“How long,” you gasp, “have I been sleeping?”

Calloused hands gently tuck a sheet around you. “Two weeks,” Anders tells you, his fingers pressed into the pulse point at your wrist. You feel, rather than see, his nod of approval.

“Where is she?” you ask, lifting your head, but he avoids your gaze. “Our last minute rescuer.” The joke falls flat. “Is she here?”

“She’s gone, Hawke.” Aveline stirs from her perch in the corner. She’s out of armor, her clothes wrinkled, but her sword glints across your desk. “She left a few days ago.”

“Lay back down,” Anders says, crushingly gentle. “You could use more rest. Food, if you’re up for it.”

You shake your head, tucking the sheet more firmly under your armpits, and stand. The world moves beneath your feet for a split second before stabilizing. “Show me,” you direct at Aveline, moving carefully toward your wardrobe.

She orders Anders out, and he goes. He must be exhausted, to put up so little fight.

Aveline doesn’t question you—just helps you dress, navigating your trembling hands. You lean on her for the walk to Lowtown, taking side streets and back alleys to avoid the crowds eagerly awaiting the sight of you. You’re not up for them right now; even the cheer that goes up in the Hanged Man is too much, but you make yourself smile and wave, just the once.

Her room is stripped bare, the candles gutted. The delicate glass bottle is gone. You sit down heavily on the mattress and brace your elbows on your knees, the air leaving your lungs in a rush. Belatedly, you realize there’s a square of blue fabric clenched in your hand.

“As soon as Anders said you would be all right, she left,” Aveline says from the doorway. “Hawke—”

“Don’t,” you grate out. “Just—go.”

She ducks her head and does as you ask. The tears trickle through your fingers, warm and salty like the ocean your pirate left you for. It’s weak, trite, overdone, to be crying here in the room where she made a waystation, but you remember the words she pressed to your skin as you lay dying.

Stupid as it is, you never expected her to leave twice.


	32. Wait

It’s weeks before the wound heals to Anders’s approval. By then, you’re so painfully out of shape that you take to drilling with Aveline and the guard. A decade has passed since you got knocked on your ass so consistently—once the guards get over their fear of sparring with the Champion, anyway.

The title is hefty, but it doesn’t protect you from blunted swords and practice shields.

“It’s good for you,” Aveline informs you, offering a hand to help you up for the tenth time in two hours. There’s a barely-hidden smile at the corner of her mouth.

“I’m glad you’re not my healer,” you grunt, letting her drag you up. Your skin pulls; it’s your imagination, or so Anders says, but you put a hand to your stomach all the same.

“I think the Champion has had enough for today,” she announces to the recruits. They grin or laugh and disperse; a few come forward to clap your shoulder on their way out of the practice yard.

“Your mabari is a harder fight than you right now, Serah Hawke,” Donnic tells you with a sympathetic smile, rubbing the hound’s ears.

“My mabari can still be distracted with the promise of meat,” you reply. He whines, offended.

Donnic chuckles and nods to Aveline before taking his leave. She passes over a water jug while your mabari investigates the corner of the yard, nose to the ground.

You know that Aveline wouldn’t linger unless she had something to say, so you wait, slurping water and bracing yourself.

“There’s no sign of her,” she says at last, watching you carefully.

“Who?” you ask, even though you know very well who. “Merrill? Did she get lost again?”

“Hawke—”

“No,” you say sharply, thrusting the jug back at her. “Stop looking for her.”

“You’re impossible,” she huffs, folding her arms across her chest. “We all know you’re miserable.” Her eyes rest pointedly on the blue bandana tied around your bicep. “Why not go after her?”

“As you so succinctly put it not twenty seconds ago, she doesn’t want to be found.” You resheath your daggers. “She earned her freedom. Leave her be.”

“I could argue that,” she replies. “If she hadn’t taken off to begin with, a lot of innocent people would still be alive.”

“That’s not why you’re looking for her.”

Her expression doesn’t change. “It could be.”

“Well, if it is, carry on with your search.” Your voice is too sharp, too brittle, to be properly humorous. “If it isn’t, kindly stop.” You raise your voice. “Come, Bear.” The mabari, recognizing the steel in your voice, follows you to the gate.

“You can’t tell me you don’t want answers,” Aveline calls after you.

“I have my answers,” you mutter. “Whether or not they satisfy you is unimportant.”

You miss her, of course, but you know better than to hunt her down. She would only run faster. You've waited for years; you think you can endure the wait for a little longer.


	33. Champion

Knight-Commander Meredith is the one who authorizes the title. She is now the political power in Kirkwall, an idea that turns your blood to ice. Aveline, though, is the woman you kneel before at the ceremony; it’s important that Kirkwall maintain the facade that a holy order does not hold power here. The gathered nobles—men and women who jeered and sneered at you, some as recently as three months ago—cheer and cry for you.

The armor is fine—pretty, too. It fits like a glove, follows your every movement with ease. The dwarves who were commissioned to make it know your fighting style well; you think Aveline must have advised them. You see the glimmer of pride in her eyes as you rise, as though this, finally, is a respectable occupation for her old friend.

It isn’t. It’s a charade, a mask: they give you the title of Champion to reassure themselves that the one who saved their city is as upstanding as the rest. They give you a shield to hide behind while you prowl their streets after dark. They give your lawlessness a pass, but only because it has served them well.

 _We’re not like those people, are we?_  Isabela is long gone, but her whisper is still in your ear, reminding you.  _We play by our own rules._

In a fit of pique, you pull the hood up so it shadows your eyes. The only thing the crowd will see now is your smirking mouth and the red paint smeared from nose to cheekbone. You can almost hear Aveline’s sigh.

These people would do well to remember that you are not their housebroken mabari; that you cannot be bought with beautiful armor and high-class ceremony; that their tears and welcome mean nothing to you, you who they have kicked beneath their feet for years, you who have suffered in Lowtown when they scarcely know such a place exists.

You might be a cheer on their lips, but you could be their dying gasp, too—someday.

You wave. Behind your hood, where no one can see, you close your eyes and imagine her proud smirk.  _That’s my girl_ , she would say, tracing a thumb over the slash of red.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like the idea that Hawke has had her armor since being given her title, despite the annoying gameplay mechanic that only grants you the Mantle of the Champion in pieces throughout Act 3. So there.


	34. If Wishes Were Poppy

Sometimes, when you’ve nothing better to do, you go down to the safe stretch of the Wounded Coat. The ocean washes sand and shells and rotted old wreckage over your feet. You think about letting her bandana slip through your fingers; you think about letting the sea bear it out to a watery grave; you think about letting her go.

Your merry band of misfits complains about letting you out of sight on your own these days, especially when you snag a bottle of the Hanged Man’s finest and beeline for the countryside. Varric keeps telling you that the Champion has enemies, and even Fenris, who happily invites risky violence on at least a biweekly basis, reminds you that there  _is_  no safe stretch on the Wounded Coast.

You can’t seem to make them understand that this is exactly why you come. Here, in old piecemeal armor with your toes in the sand, you’re just  _Hawke_  again.  _Marian_ , even. There’s no one to bow and murmur, “Champion,” in varying tones of reverence and envy. There’s just you and the slow drag of time while you drink and wait, bracing yourself for the moment when you give up on her.

You always decide to wait a little longer.

Sometimes, you imagine that she’ll come ashore in the wreckage of another ship, at precisely the time you free the cork from the bottle. She’ll spit out seawater and lie, gasping and laughing, on the sand beside you. She’ll tell you what adventures she had while she was away, and later, you’ll map every one of them in the new scars on her skin, hands relearning the ridges and curves of her flesh.

Varric’s forever after you for the details—for the story of you and your pirate queen—now that the pain of loss has faded with the passing of time. You can talk about her now, but this dream is a little too romantic, even for you, even for Varric, so you keep your hopes for the future to yourself and bury her in the past, as though that’s where she belongs.

You wonder how many of them can see through the lie.


	35. Prodigal

You never quite adjust to fighting without Isabela.

It reminds you of when you first lost Bethany: the chasm at your back where your sister with her fire and ice and green healing should have been, inadequately filled by Merrill’s electricity and stone or Anders’s hands of blue. When a heavy enemy bogs you down, you still expect Isabela’s daggers to fell him before he can bury you; Varric’s bolts startle you still, every time.

You duck beneath the sweep of a double-bearded axe and rise while your assailant is still unbalanced. Behind you, Aveline shouts, Varric hums, and Merrill’s lightning crackles, setting your hair on end. This kind of thing has become bi-monthly at the Hanged Man, when new blood blows in and decides to test the famed Champion of Kirkwall. You’re easy to find; there’s a certain image that comes with your title, and no one else wanders the city with red paint (“Is that blood?” you’ve heard passerby whisper on more than one occasion) smeared across their nose.

The Hanged Man is bad for this sort of thing: poor lighting, too many drunks and chairs to trip over, and uneven floorboards. You stay light on your toes, sticking your feet every time you land from a kick. He isn’t the Arishok, but you’re tired and a little drunk, and he’s backing you up to where you’ll be trapped, too close to the wall to slide away. The grin on his face is ugly; he’s already tasting your blood on his blade.

You hear the whistle of warning just in time. Your body reacts automatically, even though you haven’t heard that signal in three years; instead of following his last sloppy charge to get in a strike of your own, you drop to the floor and roll through the dirt. A second later, he hits the ground beside you, a dagger rooted in his chest.

You know that dagger, just as you knew that particular whistle. You wonder if you’ve finally been knocked in the head one too many times.

She leans over you, gold jewelry glinting, lips full with a wary smirk, arm stretched out, a hand offered to help you up. An old red handkerchief is tied around her hair.

“I thought bar brawls were beneath someone of your station,” she teases.

You half-believe she’ll evaporate if you accept the hand up, but she’s calloused and warm beneath your fingers.

Someone else will have to break the tension of your silence; you’ve lost the air to speak. It's been six years since you first saw her, but some things never change.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The timeline for this game is so screwy; I always thought each Act took one year, with three years between them, so in reality from game's beginning to end, ten years would pass (one year in servitude, one year for Act 1, three year gap, one year for Act 2, three year gap, one year for Act 3). For the sake of canon, though, we're going to go with Varric's statement in Act 3--that it had been six years since Hawke petitioned Bartrand. Whatever, Bioware.


	36. Wallowing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quest tag: _Isabela's Regret_.

Isabela avoids you, and when you do manage to catch her in The Hanged Man, it’s awkward and stilted. You want to ask her why she came back if she wasn’t going to  _come back_. Predictably, though, you don’t.

“You don’t have to keep checking up on me,” she says, not bothering to look over her shoulder as she signals for another drink. “I’m fine.”

“As if I don’t have better things to do than babysit you,” you retort. “I’m just here for the rat-flavored whiskey.”

You think she chuckles a bit at that, but it’s a wretched sound. “I should have kept running,” she informs her whiskey. “The relic was mine. I caused more of a mess by trying to help. Surprise, surprise,” she adds in a mutter, taking a drink.

“I couldn’t have saved Kirkwall without you,” you tease, but your heart thumps painfully in your chest. This sounds like the conversation you need to have; you’re just surprised she’s finally instigating it.

“Don’t patronize me,” she replies, her voice deadly. “I almost got you killed. You’d have won a brawl with the lot of them. It fits your style.”

“Just because I’m not a world-famous duelist,” you say with a long-suffering sigh.

“I’m trying to be serious, Hawke.” She gets to her feet, leaving the drink to finally face you. “The fact is, you and I have nothing in common anymore. You’re a Champion.” She’s within arm’s reach, but she looks down, features contorting. “I’m just a lying, thieving snake.”

You reach out to grip her shoulder. She flinches at the contact, but doesn’t pull away. “Oh, please,” you snap, struggling to keep your voice low. “Surely you, of all people, can see the costume I’m wearing. They dressed me up like their favorite pet because it scared them that a lowlife could protect this nughole when their precious guards and templars couldn’t. They give me a pass and pretend I’m not the same Hawke who bribed her way into the city, who stole and killed for coin. I thought you would know better.”

Her lip twitches. “You were only mercenary by necessity.”

“And you weren’t?”

She shakes her head. “It’s different.”

“Right.” Your hand drops from her shoulder. She looks slumped and defeated, not the Isabela you know at all. “Tell you what, when you’re done wallowing in self-pity, you know where I’ll be. And, Isabela.” She lifts her chin, as though about to look at you, but decides against it. “You’re still my best friend. I still care about you. Whatever happened, that hasn’t changed.”

You leave her standing there, staring at the floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon dialogue shamelessly gutted for my own nefarious purposes.


	37. Truce

Isabela comes in through the window while you’re pushing papers at your desk.

There’s a lot involved in being Champion. The social nugshit, of course—attending parties, calling on nobles, making appearances. There’s also juggling your finances and answering your mail, tasks that Bodahn and Varric split between them, but you don’t like being out of the loop, so you usually take it upon yourself to read the documents and sign the pages. An hour in, without fail, it always gives you a headache.

You don’t budge when she drops quietly to the floor, even though the words have started to blur in front of you. Straightening up, she  _tsks_  softly. “Oh, Hawke, what have they done to you?” she laments, settling her hands on your shoulders. Her thumbs dig into the ache around your shoulder blades.

You have to work to keep your muscles from stiffening. It’s been three years since anyone touched you like this.

“It’s only paperwork,” you retort. Carefully, you lean back into her fingers.

“That  _only paperwork_  has you tied up in knots,” she replies, her hand sliding down to your elbow. She tugs, trying to get you to put the quill down. Defiantly, you scribble off another signature.

She moves, swinging around until she’s straddling your lap, knocking the quill from your hand. She kisses you, soft and familiar, and for a moment it’s as it’s always been. You let yourself drift under the warmth of her weight. Her fingers thread through your hair and tip your head back, to the side, and you let her, happily malleable under her instruction.

When she pulls away, though, her face is full of uncertainty. “Hawke,” she says, tracing a thumb over your cheek. “What do you want from me?”

You settle your hands on her hips and pull her that little bit closer. “Stay,” you murmur. “Not forever. Just until you get tired of us.”  _Of me_ , you think.

You can’t place the peculiar expression in her eyes, but soon, you stop trying. She leans in to kiss you again. Maybe nothing has been solved, but you let yourself forget.

You’ve been too long without her to do anything else.


	38. Scarred

Even after six years, you aren’t quite used to the splendor of a bath down the hall from your bedroom.

The real bath was a few hours ago, used to scrub out the dirt after a trip to the Wounded Coast.  _This_  is purely a luxury. The overheated water sinks into your tired muscles, alleviating tension everywhere it touches. You pretend it’s an exercise in meditation, but really, you’re half-asleep where you lie.

When the door creaks open, you’re slow to open your eyes. If it was a true intruder, you would have heard a warning before now; the entire estate is warded these days. It's only Isabela, one eyebrow raised, a smirk on her lips.

“Better women than you have drowned that way,” she remarks.

“There are no better women than me,” you demur, groping for your towel. You turn your back to her while you rise up and step out of the bath. “Toss my robe over here, will you?” you ask over your shoulder.

She doesn’t answer. When you finish drying and look up, you understand why.

Her eyes are fixed on your stomach, a hand clasped over her mouth. You haven’t noticed the scar in a couple of years, but the raised flesh is as ugly as the battle itself. It’s a near-vertical line, ridged pink-silver, a few inches to one side of your belly button; there’s one to match on your back, a little too close to your spine for comfort.

When she first came back to you last week, the lamp in your room was dim; your tryst was frantic, the product of three years of celibacy. She hasn’t seen this wound since you were bleeding out in her arms.

You walk to the hook beside her and take down your robe. Her eyes gleam wet; even when the fabric covers the scar, they remain fixed on your middle. Gently, you pull her hand away from her mouth.

“I’m fine,” you remind her, tipping her chin up. “It takes more than the big mean Arishok to kill me.”

You expect her to kiss you, maybe, or smirk again, but instead she winds her arms around you and buries her face in your shoulder. Shock turns your limbs to lead; it’s a few seconds before you wrap your arms around her in turn.

Funny, how you had never considered that she would be distraught over this. For the first time, you imagine her squirreled away in the Free Marches—not living free and adventurous, but wasting her energy with worry. For the first time, you’re not sure whether the last three years were harder for you or for her.

She leans back, just enough to drag her wrist over her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she says shakily, avoiding your gaze. “I didn’t—I didn’t expect—I thought Anders…”

“He did the best he could.” You smile for her. In truth, you feel like crying; you’re not sure why. “The Champion of Kirkwall should have a few scars, shouldn’t she? It’s good for legends, or so Varric tells me.”

She tries to smile back, but her lips tremble just enough for you to see. “Come on,” she says at last, lacing her fingers through yours. “I’ll make it up to you.”


	39. Expectations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quest tag: _No Rest for the Wicked_.

It rents your nerves, but after all these years, Castillon walks away.

You stand at the docks, the world lurching beneath your feet, and give her everything she’s ever wanted.

You love her, you love her, you love her. Your heart beats with the sluggish foolishness of it. She’s only just come back to you, and here you are, offering her the horizon one more time. When will you stop inviting her to go, and demand instead that she stay? Six years, and you’ve never loved something half so desperately as you love her. Your whole life, all you’ve done is hold on too tightly, and the people you loved slipped through your fingers all the same. The one time, the  _one time_  that you loosen your grasp, she keeps fluttering back to you.

You don’t know what to make of it.

“Do you set sail in the morning, then?” you ask, and you do it with a smile on your face, even though everything inside you has turned suddenly to ash.

“Oh, Hawke,” she replies, lifting a hand to your cheek. With a skilled thumb, she smears the blood of your last battle over your nose. It feels heavier than any ceremonial paint ever did. “It isn’t that easy. I don’t even have a  _crew_. No, I’m afraid you’re stuck with me.” She gives a theatrical sigh, her eyes glinting wickedly. “Did you really think you could get rid of me that easily?”

You did. You did. After everything, you thought she would run at the first opportunity. You’re so used to letting her go that you don’t know how to ask her to stay. You’re shaking the cage, demanding that she fly free, and here she is, looping her arm through yours, dragging you back to your estate. Your expectations fall short of your reality, and it unnerves you, frightens you. You're still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Aveline, sour as she is about the slaver’s gentle escape, smiles at you when you pass. You wish you understood what she was smiling about.


	40. Fallen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quest tag: _Questioning Beliefs, Act 3_.

You’ve only been back from Sundermount for an hour when Isabela knocks on your front door (like a civilized person—it boggles the mind). Bodahn shows her to the study, where you’re squirreled away with letters that need answering and Aveline’s gift of fine alcohol.

“You didn’t come by the Hanged Man.” When you stretch and get up from your chair, she has one eyebrow raised at you like an accusation.

You gesture to the papers. “It piles up while I’m away.” It sounds better than,  _I thought you would be gone, so I didn’t go looking_.

“I wanted to talk to you.” She’s wringing her hands. You watch, confused; you’ve never seen her do that before. “Is this a bad time?”

“No,” you invite, though dread pools in your stomach. “They won’t combust, I’m sure.”

She smiles—a real, genuine smile, not the smirk you know—and doesn’t say anything, just goes on knotting and unknotting her hands, as though she’s trying to find the words. It’s horribly unnerving.

“So, when do I get the grand tour?” you ask, unsure how else to break the silence.

“You’ve already,” she starts, then breaks off with a laugh. “Oh, you mean my ship? It’s not fit to be seen, I’m afraid. Mustard-colored satin was a special indulgence of Castillon’s.”

You shudder. “He has terrible taste.”

“Mmm.” She seems preoccupied, as though Castillon is the least of her worries.  _If only_ , you think, imagining beheading him for the hundredth time. “Look, I was thinking—I’m not going to stay in Kirkwall forever, but...I could really use someone like you on my ship. Someone who has my back, no matter what. I know you have...responsibilities...here.” She wrinkles her nose. “But I need someone I can trust, if the city could spare you. Eventually.”

For a moment, you think you’ve heard her wrong. “I’m a terrible sailor,” you blurt out. “I was seasick all the way from Gwaren.”

She laughs, a little easier now, and steps closer. “You were in the hold. Of course you were seasick. I’ll teach you.” Her eyes glimmer—old wickedness rekindled. “It wouldn’t be the first time. You’re a quick learner, Hawke.”

“Exploring the world and getting away from all this?” You try to smile. Your heart is beating too hard. “I’m game.”

“It’ll just be you and me,” she says. You can see the dream in her eyes. “Chasing that horizon. I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be.” Maybe your face shows your surprise at this incredibly sentimental statement, because she blushes—Isabela  _blushes_ —and glances away. “I—I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s come over me.”

“What’s going on, ‘Bela?” you ask, because you feel as if you’ve missed something.

“I think...” She looks up. Her hands are knotted together again. “I think I’ve...fallen...for you.”

You force yourself to breathe steadily. “I thought you said love wasn’t for you,” you remark, perfectly neutral.

“I know what I said.” She reaches out to cup your cheek, a gesture too tender for her by far. “What, a girl can’t change her mind?”

You open your mouth, but you’re finally out of witty one-liners. You close it again. You must look like a fish.

“The great Hawke, speechless,” she teases. “What a rare sight.” Just as quickly, her features fall again. “Am I too late?” she asks quietly. “Did I wait too long?”

“No,” you say, as quickly and desperately as you feel. “No, just—promise you won’t run off and break my heart.”

“Oh, sweet thing,” she murmurs. “I think you’ve had enough of that.”

Your ears are ringing. From what you remember, this is what going into shock feels like.

“You knew,” you say hoarsely. “All this time, you knew?”

“I thought you would grow out of it.” She smiles sadly. “Puppy love is fun, but I was sure that was all it was, and then...the relic, the Arishok. I never stopped to think that you were  _serious_ , and then you were lying there dying, and...I felt so foolish.”

“How do you think I felt,” you demand weakly, “when I woke up and you were gone?”

She flinches. “I didn’t want to go. I just thought it would be better. For you. To get over me.”

“Yes,” you say, not a little sardonically, “that worked very well, Isabela. I don’t love you at all.”

“You’re teasing,” she replies, but she sounds a little uncertain.

“Of course I’m teasing,” you hiss. In one swift move, you have her up on your desk, scattering papers everywhere, her thighs pressed in around your hips. You loop your arms around her waist and lean in and then you’re kissing, warm and wet and desperate, and she clings to you like she’ll never let go.

When you finally pull back, she reaches up to swipe a gentle thumb across your cheek. “You’re crying,” she accuses, her own eyes suspiciously bright.

You hadn't even noticed.


	41. Fancy Words

Sex with her has always been like drowning, but it’s different now—like being borne back to the beach, instead of dragged out to sea.

“Maker,” you gasp, tilting your head to the side to give her better access to your throat. She always knows just the spot—the muscle where neck meets shoulder—to make you squirm. She stops the gentle sucking just long enough to reprimand you.

“Your cursing is less creative since I’ve been away.” If you’re not mistaken, she’s actually disgruntled about this. “You’ve been living in Hightown too long, sweet thing.”

You struggle to remember some of the more titillating phrases you’ve ever used. She’s right; the Lowtown edge rubs off after a while, no matter how often you visit The Hanged Man.

She threads fingers into your hair and tilts your head further back. Her tongue traces down your throat—and down, and down—until her lips fasten gently on one peaked nipple. With her free hand, she rolls the other between her fingers. She knows exactly how you like this—not rough, like everything else, but soft and warm and tender, gentle attention before moving on.

“By the tits of my Ancestors,” you grit out.

She sighs. “Standard,” she murmurs against your skin, her hand moving down to gently caress the scar on your navel. She only lingers there a moment. Her touch smoothes over the jagged ridge. Then her fingers lift again, dancing from your stomach to the thatch of coarse, dark hair between your thighs. Her fingernails scratch softly against your skin, just before a single fingertip dips down between your lips and smears slick over the nub of nerves throbbing for her attention.

You moan, vision going a bit gray, head falling back. Her soft laugh is muffled by your skin. When you open your eyes again, she’s sprawled on her stomach between your legs, your knees hooked over her shoulders. Her eyes glint wickedly; her hair brushes against the insides of your thighs; the sight of her, spread out on your bed, is one you could stand to see more of.

She laves a greedy tongue between your lips while her fingertips trace your opening, teasing. The joke is on her, though; your stamina isn’t what it used to be, and she always did overload you with sensation. If your concentration breaks for one second, round one will be over like  _that_.

“Balls,” you offer up, weak and breathy.

She  _tsks_. The flick of her tongue makes your breath hitch. Two fingers slip into you, curling, just up to the second knuckle.

“ _Fucking_  balls,” you groan, “how creative do you expect me to be when you’re doing  _that_ —”

Her fingers thrust; her soft laugh washes warm breath over your nerves. You twitch, one hand clenched in the sheets, struggling to breathe evenly, but her fingers thrust again, and again, the broad sweep of her tongue relentless now. You buck up against that wet pressure, mindless with the desire quickly slipping out of your control, and then—

It rolls over you like a wave, like being smothered, and you only hear yourself gasping for air when the bulk of the pleasure has receded, leaving your muscles warm and loose in the aftermath.

She cocks an eyebrow at you and presses a kiss to your thigh. “ _Andraste’s flaming knicker-weasels_ ,” she muses. “That sounds like something  _Anders_  would say.”

You giggle. She slides back up your body, settling her weight close beside yours. “I can’t be held responsible for anything I say at times like this,” you remark innocently, smoothing a hand over the curve of her waist, following it to the flare of her hip. She squirms, edging closer, eyes quickly darkening. “You pushed me.” You wrap your fingers around the tensed muscle of her thigh. She exhales shakily as your thumb strokes her skin. “I would have been content with groans,” you continue casually, using your leverage to roll her onto her back. Her legs automatically hitch up around your hips. Her boots are still on; soft leather and chilled buckles press into your skin, eliciting a shiver. You roll your hips against hers, offering pressure, and she takes it, panting. “But no, you want fancy, lewd words—”

“Maker’s hairy  _balls_ , Hawke, would you stop talking and  _fuck me_  already—!”

You laugh until your ribs ache, spilling your breath over vast swaths of her skin, dragging your lips down, down,  _down_.


	42. Sailing

When Tallis approaches you about your invitation to Chateau Haine, Isabela decides that her new ship is the best way to travel to Orlais.

“I thought you said you didn’t have a crew?” you ask uneasily.

“I’m sure we can rustle one up with your name and some gold,” she replies, unconcerned. “Official Champion business will draw out the best sailors, you know.”

As usual, she’s right, and then you’re stuck on a voyage through the Waking Sea to a contest you don’t care about with an elf you don’t trust. Tallis makes herself scarce during the journey. You don’t see much of Varric, either; he seems to sense that you’re annoyed with him for getting you into this mess. You’re afraid to even lift your feet from the deck while the ship’s in motion. The cursed thing is as fast as advertised.

But being on deck does at least keep the seasickness at bay, so you spend a lot of time close to the bow, watching the waves. You can grudgingly admit it’s a beautiful sight, and the crisp air is a welcome change from Kirkwall.

On the second day, Isabela leaves the wheel with the most highly-recommended member of her temporary crew. “Come on, poor thing,” she says, prying you from where you’re wrapped around the railing. “I want to show you something.”

Her hand makes you feel a little steadier while crossing the deck, but when you reach the shroud leading up to the tallest mast, you stop dead.

“Isabela,” you protest. “No.”

She props her hands on her hips. “I’m hurt, Hawke. Don’t you trust me? You feel better on deck, don’t you? Just like I said.”

You tip your head back. It’s such a long way up, and you feel shaky enough as it is.

“Fine,” you grumble. “Lead on, siren.”

“I promise not to kill you,” she swears, eyes gleaming wickedly, and leads the way up. At least you have a spectacular view of her ass during the climb.

At the top, she pulls herself into the crow’s nest and lets her legs dangle between the wooden slats. You follow, shaky with relief at being allowed to sit down. She loops her arm through yours, rests her cheek on your shoulder, and points out to the horizon, where the sun is setting.

“Beautiful,” she sighs, “isn’t it?”

You press your lips to her hair. Only a day at sea, and she already tastes of salt. “This is a terribly romantic thing to do,” you tease.

“Shh,” she murmurs playfully. “Don’t tell anyone. Besides, I scared you half to death first. The Champion of Kirkwall, afraid of heights—”

You drop a hand to her waist and dig your fingers in. She screeches with laughter. On deck, a dozen confused crew members search the skies for the source of the outburst.


	43. Rescue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quest tag: _Mark of the Assassin._

You’re leaning against the cell wall, dozing, when a hand frantically darts through a gap in the iron bars. You start awake.

“Hawke.” Isabela’s features are perfectly still, but when you roll to your feet to face her, her hands perform a brisk perfunctory check on every part of your body she can reach. There’s the slightest tremble in her touch. She’s been worried. “You’re all right?”

“Fine,” you reassure her, reaching back through the bars to touch her, too. “Just get me out of here.”

“I’ll kill you,” she informs Tallis, matter-of-fact, like murder can be made casual. She yanks her lockpicks from a pocket on the inside of her boot with far more force than necessary. “Slowly. Painfully.” Varric doesn’t add a thing, but you wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of that glare.

“She’s made her apologies,” you interject, far more gently than Tallis deserves. In truth, you don’t want her blood on your hands; you’re getting old, and your conscience is catching up with you. “And we have a fine escape route, unless you’re desperate to get into Prosper’s vaults.”

“No,” she tells you curtly. The latch on the cell clicks, the bars roll up, and she presses a swift kiss to your lips. “We’re leaving,” she orders. “Now. She can get her own damned jewel.”

“It’s not,” Tallis protests, but you lift a hand and wave her off. Her shoulders slump, only a little, before her eyes harden and she straightens again. You feel a little bad for her, but not bad enough to get mixed up with Prosper and his wyvern and this Salit fellow—and certainly not enough to provoke Isabela, who is already seething. You take your offered gear back from Varric and gesture for Tallis to lead the way to the caves.

And when the Qunari demands that you consider a higher purpose, Isabela’s eyes spark. Her chin lifts. Her fists clench. “I have a purpose,” she declares. “I have Hawke.”

You remember those words all the way back to Kirkwall. They keep you warm through the unexpected storms, when the cold spray of an angry sea threatens to freeze you.

"Possessive," you tease when you've finally pried her from the wheel.

"Protective," she corrects, with a curiously vulnerable look. You lean down to kiss the worry away.


	44. Lull

One night when you’re sipping tea by the fire, Bodahn tells you that he and Sandal are making plans to depart.

He’s anxious about leaving. You can see the genuine worry in the deepened lines around his eyes. But whatever protective instinct he feels for you pales in comparison to what he feels for Sandal, and Kirkwall has become a volatile place. You never expected the two dwarves to stay with you forever, but you never expected to be so heartsore at the thought of them departing, either.

“That pirate girl of yours will look after you, messere,” Bodahn insists, fussing with the sugar bowl. “You’ll never even notice we’re gone.”

You force a smile. Your muscles don’t cooperate quite the way they used to. “I’ve half a mind to come with you,” you sigh, stretching your leg toward the fire. The ball of pain in your knee loosens a bit. You need Anders to take another look at that soon, even though you know what he’ll say.  _I can take the edge off_ , with a glowing blue hand hovering over the joint,  _but I can’t undo the damage you take over time, Hawke_.

Bodahn chuckles. “Got a bit of the wanderlust yourself, eh?” There’s a knock from the foyer; he finally leaves the sugar alone in favor of going to answer the door. “I hope this business with the templars doesn’t get worse before we go,” he adds, a shadow passing over his features. “I worry about you, messere.”

When Isabela enters the study, she finds you with a broken teacup at your feet and your face in your hands, shaking with silent sobs.

“What’s this?” she asks gently, nudging the broken porcelain out of the way with her boot. She kneels down in front of you, resting her hands on your knees.

You don’t know what to tell her— _everything’s changing_ or  _I’m afraid_  or  _why did I ever think money and status could keep us safe_ —so you just lean forward and let her stroke your hair and listen to her soothing nonsense words until the tears finally stop.


	45. Throw the Gauntlet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quest tag: _On the Loose_.

“I am the Champion of Kirkwall,” you snap, “not a templar. Get someone else to find your renegade mages.”

The Knight-Commander’s blue eyes narrow. Behind you, Isabela shifts incrementally, her stance bracing for a fight. Varric is still, but his crossbow will be in his hands instantly if this goes south. You didn’t dare bring any of your other companions to this meeting; your influence only protects Merrill and Anders to a point, Aveline can’t afford to butt heads with Meredith, and putting Fenris too close to this issue inspires sulking the likes of which you’ve never seen.

“An unchecked blood mage murdered your mother to satisfy a delusion,” the most feared woman in Kirkwall reminds you. “Would you endanger another’s loved ones because you disagree with my methods?”

“Leave my family out of this,” you snarl. “You know as well as I that not all apostates are dangerous criminals.”

She lifts a hand to her forehead, obviously tired of your banter. “Your duty compels you to protect Kirkwall from all conceivable threats, no matter who you call friend,” she replies. “I trust that you can judge the danger for yourself. I bid you good day, Champion.”

“We could always leave,” Isabela mutters as you excuse yourselves from Templar Hall. “Let them sort out their own damned mess.”

“She wasn’t named Champion for her habit of running away, Rivaini,” Varric returns in a similar undertone. If you’re not mistaken, he’s grimacing a little.

“I know,” Isabela sighs, disappointed but fond.

“We’ll be running soon enough,” you tell them, a hard edge to your joking tone. “This city has been approaching its boiling point for years. I very much doubt the people will be satisfied with a Champion when they could have a scapegoat instead.”

There’s a pause, and then Isabela remarks, “You’ll help me kidnap her, won’t you, Varric? I have plenty of rope.”

“Just say the word,” Varric says, and you all laugh, for all the world like the oncoming storm can be shrugged off.


	46. Thank the Carta

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quest tag: _Legacy_.

You haven’t seen Bethany in three years.

It hits you,  _really_  hits you, when she turns up at the door of the estate with a scowl on her face. She looks older: the faintest crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes, a wrinkle in her brow that wasn’t there before, a harder line in the muscles of her shoulders. She wears her hair differently, tied back from her face, a few renegade strands pulling free from the braid. You stand there, a little shell-shocked, and she holds herself stiffly and doesn’t quite meet your eyes.

She never even replied to your letter, the one you wrote to tell her you survived the Qunari uprising.

“We have a problem,” she announces curtly. “The carta broke into the Warden Keep at Ansburg and tried to attack me. Varric says they’ve come after you, too.”

You don’t care. You can’t believe how vehemently you don’t care. You embrace her without thinking, pulling her close. For a long moment, you’re afraid she’ll squirm away—she certainly stiffens up like she’s preparing to do so—but then she hugs you back, letting out a long sigh.

When you pull back, her eyes are wet. “I’m sorry,” she begins, but you shake your head.

“Don’t be. I understand.” You rest your arm around her shoulders and tug her inside. “You’re getting old, Beth. I think I see a gray hair.”

She laughs. It doesn’t sound like it used to—there’s an edge that was never there before—but it’s still a relief to hear it. “Speak for yourself, Sister. I can feel the arthritis from here.”

“Hawke?” Isabela’s voice stutters around a yawn. “Who’s here?”

You left her sleeping to answer the door; now she’s at the railing, eyes widening in delight. At least she had the foresight to put on your robe.

“Is that you, sweetness?” she calls, grinning. “Goodness, the uniform has improved, hasn’t it? Stay right there, I’ll put on some clothes.”

She vanishes back into the bedroom, and you offer Bethany a chair by the fire before dropping into the one opposite, stretching your leg out with a groan.

“Why is ‘Bela here?” Bethany asks. She moves her chair forward so that she can touch your knee. “And what in Andraste’s name have you done to your poor joints?”

“It’s a hard life,” you reply.

A burst of soft green light crackles on Bethany’s fingertips and sinks into your leg, easing the swelling. Your body doesn’t fight it, not one bit; you can feel the joint give under Bethany’s familiar magic.

She raises her eyebrows. “Don’t avoid the question.”

You wave away the accusation. “I’m sure you’ve drawn your own conclusions by now.”

“Obviously you’re sleeping together,” she says frankly, without the slightest twitch of embarrassment. It’s your turn to raise your eyebrows. You remember a Bethany who turned bright red at the very mention of sex. “But are you truly  _lovers_ , or just—”

“Oh, stop worrying about your sister’s honor,” Isabela cuts in with exasperation, appearing at the bottom of the stairs. “I’ve made an honest woman out of her, I’ll have you know.”

“You couldn’t make an honest woman out of anyone,” Bethany admonishes, but she does it with a smile and gets up to give Isabela a tight hug.

“You look fit,” Isabela says approvingly, holding Bethany at arm’s length. “Did you get my books?”

Bethany does turn a little pink at this, and you and Isabela both laugh at her expense, but she smiles along, rolling her eyes. You remind yourself to thank the carta before you kill them.


	47. Peace

It’s like old times: you and Isabela goading one another into increasingly ridiculous stunts; Varric and Bethany eyeing one another coyly when they think no one’s looking; strained humor in the face of looming catastrophe. The Deep Roads are not quite so stifling as they once were, but your chest still tightens up once in a while. You let Bethany take point; she leads you through the endless tunnels with ease.

This is her world, now. Every time Varric calls her  _Sunshine_  is a knife to the stomach. The wound is old, but it still aches. She belongs up there—and because of you, she’s down  _here_.

Back at the estate, after a thorough scrubbing, you curl up in a cozy chair with Aveline’s bottle of fine spirits and your sister sitting opposite, holding her glass out for a drink. You both sip quietly.

“I can’t stay,” she says at last.

You swallow. “I know,” you reply.

“Alistair is lenient enough,” she continues, “but I’d feel badly if I kept them waiting for me. They’re stuck at Ansburg until I return.”

“ _Stuck_?” you echo, frowning.

She smiles. “I’m the only mage in their unit,” she replies. “They don’t like to brave the Deep Roads without me.”

You smile back. “Why am I not surprised you’ve made yourself indispensable?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she murmurs, leaning back and pressing the glass to her temple. “You seem to have done well enough without me. My sister, the Champion of Kirkwall.”

“I took a sword through the stomach for that title,” you say darkly. “And then my pirate had an emotional crisis and left me, and I became the grouchiest Champion this city has ever known. I haven’t done so well, really.”

She’s giggling by the time you’re done complaining, eyes crinkled at the corners. “Are you trying to get me to stay?”

“Not forever,” you hedge. “Just a little while. There’s another storm brewing. I’d feel better with you watching my back. Knowing Meredith, Kirkwall will be at war within the week.”

She gives a heavy, put-upon sigh. You know she’s teasing. “One week,” she says sternly, “and then I’m going back to Ansburg.”

“I’m all a-flutter.”

You both go back to quietly sipping your drinks, at least for a moment, and then: “You two are really quite repulsive,” Bethany accuses, nose in the air.

You gape at her, pretending to be offended. “ _We’re_  repulsive? What about you and Varric, making eyes at one another like lovesick teenagers?”

Two bright spots of pink appear on her cheeks. “We were doing no such thing,” she says loftily.

You snort, and then you laugh, full out, clutching your stomach. She joins in. By the time the two of you manage to gasp for air, your eyes are streaming, tears rolling down your cheeks.


	48. Boom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quest tag: _The Last Straw_.

You have tried your level best to stay out of this quarrel, even though Meredith and Orsino have dragged you back in at every opportunity.

It’s not that you don’t have an opinion—after all, your sister and father were apostates—but you do try to steer clear of ideals. Messy things, ideals; Varric and Isabela agree. People try to fit things into little crates not made for them, and then their wranglers are surprised when their pet bursts through the slats to strangle them.

You know better.  _Survival is all that matters_ , you once whispered to Athenril’s newest recruit, a boy barely fourteen,  _so **run**._

But here, now, the Chantry is burning, ash drifting down to settle on your shoulders, and you know you can no longer remain removed. Too many threads have reached out to ensnare you: your Darktown healer, his shoulders slumped with the weight of his crime; your fearless guardswoman, her eyes alive with fury, with worry; your Grey Warden, blinking in disbelief, a strange hope lighting up her face; your elves, your mages, your refugees, the people who have been crushed by the City of Chains.

“Choose wisely, Champion,” Meredith thunders. “Your title does not protect you if you will not do your duty.”

Meredith is a fool if she thinks that this, of all things, tightens your shackles. Your title cannot be bought; it cannot be elected; it cannot be stripped. You are removed from their fumbling bureaucracy, from their foolish ideals. Perhaps you will die when the streets run red, or perhaps you will drag a stumbling revolution to its feet and set it on its path before you vanish into the night.

Either way, you will shake off Kirkwall’s hold on you forever, and there is a ship in the harbor calling your name.

You take one step—just enough to shield Anders, to put yourself closer to the First Enchanter than the Knight-Commander. Your companions—some with steely resolve, some with grumbles—move with you. Orsino lets out a sigh of relief, his shoulders drooping.

“Oh, Isabela,” your pirate mutters at your back. You hear the slither of a dagger being freed. “What have you stepped in this time?”


	49. Run

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quest tag: _The Last Straw_.

You’re on your knees in the broken stone, and Bethany is plucking desperately at your armor, trying to get you to move.

“Animated bloody statues,” you wheeze, struggling to catch your breath. “The kind that pummel you when you get too close. Charming. This city has everything.”

Your sister holds out a hand, her eyes flitting anxiously from templar to templar. You let her pull you up, but go almost immediately back to your knees again, this time beside Isabela. Her breath is a wispy gasp through her crushed windpipe. Anders is already working, blue light flickering eerily in the haze of shifting dust. The Gallows might well be beyond repair.

You squeeze her hand, holding her eyes with your own. “That’s nothing,” you joke, and you think she tries to raise a skeptical eyebrow at you. “Wait until an angry Qunari runs you through. Then we’ll talk.”

She draws a sudden, deep gasp and sits up, rubbing her throat. “Don’t,” Anders advises, pulling his hands away. “And go easy on your voice for at least three days. I can’t fix it all.” The smile at the corner of his mouth is bitter, but then, it hasn’t been anything else in years.

“We have to go,” Bethany urges.

You slide an arm beneath Isabela’s shoulders and help her to her feet. There's a playfully woebegone look on her face when she glances up at you.

“I’m quite tired of Kirkwall, Hawke,” she says, while Aveline sighs pointedly with much clanking of armor. “I think we should set sail.”

“I think you’re right, my dear pirate queen,” you say, looping your arm through hers. You smile gently at Knight-Captain Cullen as you limp past, and he nods back, his movements stiff with shock. “To the harbor?”

Her eyes dance. “To the harbor.”


	50. Aftermath

Varric will tell this story far better than you ever did.

The dwarf has made you a legend, after all: the quick and powerful Hawke, slayer of ogres and dragons, Champion of Kirkwall, the dagger at the Arishok’s throat, the mabari at Meredith’s heels. The shadow you cast is ten feet tall, too big for a woman called Marian. You’re just a Fereldan turnip, really, someone who got caught up in things much too big for her, and now you have a lot of scars and only one set of armor to your name.

And a blue bandana, knotted around your arm, the frayed ends fluttering in the breeze.

You stand at the stern, watching the fires of Kirkwall grow smaller, and for once, your mind isn’t busy with your next move. You are too tired by far to think further than the blue sheets in Isabela’s cabin.

Soft footsteps approach behind you. You turn your head, just enough to see her teasing smirk.

“Not nostalgic already, are you?” she asks, her voice uncharacteristically quiet. She hides the flinch well enough, but you can tell that her throat pains her.

“I’ll miss the Hanged Man,” you admit, lifting an arm and draping it around her shoulders. She wraps hers around your waist in turn, and you lean on one another, her cheek on your shoulder, yours pressed to her hair. “Best whiskey in the Free Marches.”

You’re both quiet for a moment. You wonder if she’s watching the smoke rise, same as you, or if she’s closed her eyes.

“Where shall we go, Hawke?” she murmurs finally.

It just sounds like a name when she says it, not a myth, not a legend: well-worn, well-loved.

“How far can we run before we run out of supplies?” you ask.

“Wycome, maybe Llomerryn,” she answers. “If we’re going north, that is.”

“I think we must,” you reply, with a put-upon sigh. “My sister is only on loan. We should return her to the Wardens. I don’t want them after us, too. Anders may choose to find his own way, once we land.”

You feel her bite her tongue on her relief, and you don’t blame her. Anders is older than you by a handful of years, but you are still too old for this revolution.

You can see now that this ship will not be full for long. Aveline is already gone, left behind on the docks of the burning city. It was always hers, and never yours. You understand, even if you will miss her. Varric will follow Anders, if he debarks, and perhaps they will both trail Bethany to Ansburg, where there is another Circle to liberate. The dwarf needs a new hero; the story of the mighty Hawke ended at the Gallows.

“Wycome?” she asks softly, as though she knows you are already missing Merrill’s most puzzled expression, Fenris’s bark of a laugh, Varric’s slow smirk. You feel the thread that tangled you all together unknotting, loosening, and there’s an ache in your sinuses that threatens to spill over if you think on it too long.

“Wycome,” you answer, slipping your fingers beneath the ragged red fabric tied around her bicep.

You’ll still have her—your pirate queen: the smile in the corners of her eyes, the enthusiastic glint of her daggers, the laugh bubbling up from her throat. You smile to yourself, a little mischievously, and brush a kiss to her upturned lips.

You’ll just have to make do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Original Afterword**
> 
> Well, this little adventure turned into quite a big adventure!
> 
> There are installments that I love, and installments that I don't like quite so much, and installments I wish I'd had the time to write, but alas. This thing is already quite long, especially since it started off as a 300-word ficlet I fired into the ether on Tumblr with no plans of doing more in that vein. I may someday return to clean up some chapters and add in some others, or I may just let it stand as is: my fifty-day project of startling consistency. Mostly, I enjoyed writing in this odd style for a pairing that's very close to my heart, and I'm sure I'll write more for them in the future.
> 
> Thank you all for providing a (frankly, surprising) audience during this whole thing. I had no idea it would draw attention the way it did, especially for what I perceived at the beginning to be a relatively small pairing in a relatively small fandom. I have rarely been so glad to be wrong. (:
> 
>  
> 
> **Added on September 10, 2014**
> 
>  
> 
> Just about a year ago, on September 13, 2013, I started writing _A Slash of Blue_.
> 
> It started off as a single drabble, and morphed into something much more—fifty little ficlets in fifty hectic days. Stylistically, it’s easily the weirdest thing I’ve ever written, fanfic or otherwise. That’s probably the least interesting thing about it, though. It’s the bit of writing I’m proudest of, and the piece that has changed the way I write and what I write about the most. Since that deserves some recognition, I decided to do two things.
> 
> 1\. I was sad that, since I moved blogs, the story was really only readable here, on AO3. I decided that I would release a “remastered” version, which cleans up some grammar-type shenanigans and makes alterations to the chapters I didn’t end up liking. This is the version you’ll see on AO3 and [at my new blog](http://todisturbtheuniverse.tumblr.com/); at my archived blog, [the original story remains](http://todisturbtheuniverse-archive.tumblr.com/post/61427831523/masterpost-a-slash-of-blue-hawke-has-a-small). (You’ll have to navigate from the masterpost, though, not from the links in each installment, which are broken.)
> 
> 2\. There is so much more to  _A Slash of Blue_  that I wanted to tell, even while I was writing it. I could have added all that content in and released  _A Slash of Blue: Director’s Cut_ , but I didn’t think that would work the way I wanted it to. You see,  _A Slash of Blue_ is Hawke’s story, and most of Hawke’s story is already laid out in the fic I wrote last year. What I wanted was a new perspective. What I wanted was Isabela’s story.
> 
> I am, therefore, very excited to finally announce [ _A Slash of Red_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2280987/chapters/5013147): the Isabela POV of  _A Slash of Blue_ , written in the same weird style as its counterpart. This fic will be updated weekly for the next five weeks. Ten chapters will be released every Tuesday, both here on AO3 and [at my blog](http://todisturbtheuniverse.tumblr.com/tagged/a-slash-of-red). The remastered version of  _A Slash of Blue_  will also be released in ten-chapter installments at my blog, but on Wednesdays.
> 
> I hope you all enjoy the new content, as well as the cleaned-up old stuff! Happy reading.


End file.
